Preamble

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

NEW WRIT

For the county of Buckingham (Buckingham Division), in the room of Brigadier John Perceval Whiteley, O.B.E., killed on active service.—[Mr. James Stuart.]

Oral Answers to Questions — OIL FROM COAL

I. Mr. Sexton: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power what progress is being made in British production of oil from coal and in the research work on the subject?

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Major Lloyd George): I am glad to say that during the war the use of home-produced liquid fuel has been developed on a considerable scale, by the substitution of creosote-pitch mixture for imported fuel oil. Research work on oil from coal processes is being continued at the Fuel Research Station and the subject is being studied in my Ministry in connection with post-war developments.

Mr. Mathers: Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman keep in mind also the importance of the production of oil from shale?

Major Lloyd George: Yes, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — POINT OF AYR COLLIERIES

Sir Leonard Lyle: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he is aware that, since the introduction of control, a new seam, previously held up by excessive gas emission, has been opened in the Point of Ayr collieries; and what is the approximate increase of production repre-

sented by the coal obtained from this new seam?

Major Lloyd George: As my hon. Friend will be aware, it is not the normal practice to give figures relating to individual undertakings. I am, however, able to say that the output of the new seam which has been opened at the Point of Ayr Collieries has been increasing steadily, though this increase has been largely offset by the decline in output at other parts of the pit which are nearing exhaustion.

Sir L. Lyle: In view of the fact that this new seam came into operation only after Government control, does not my right hon. and gallant Friend think that the answer which he gave me on 22nd June was rather unfortunate?

Major Lloyd George: If my answer was unfortunate, my hon. Friend's Question was equally unfortunate. I was asked whether output had gone up, and I said that it had. I answered a plain question.

Sir L. Lyle: My right hon. and gallant Friend did not tell me that there was a new seam.

Sir L. Lyle: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether the Regional Director of Production has visited the Point of Ayr collieries since control was introduced; and whether he can state the nature of any improvements in the working of the colliery suggested by him?

Major Lloyd George: The Regional Production Director has paid 12 visits to the Point of Ayr Colliery since control was introduced, and two visits have been paid by Assistant Directors of Production. As a result of these joint meetings certain suggestions for development were agreed which enabled more men to be employed at the colliery, with a consequent increase in output.

Oral Answers to Questions — CONCENTRATION OF INDUSTRY

5. Mr. Molson: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been drawn to the growth of unemployment as a consequence of the concentration of industry; and if he has any statement to make?

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Dalton): As my right hon. Friend the Minister of Production said in the House last Wednesday, unemployment is not increasing but decreasing, despite recent substantial changes in production programmes. If, however, my hon. Friend will send me particulars of any cases he has in mind, I shall be glad to look into them in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and National Service.

Mr. Rhys Davies: While it may be true that unemployment is decreasing all over the country, is not my right hon. Friend aware that it is increasing in certain parts of the country?

Mr. Dalton: No, Sir, not as a consequence of concentration. There were some temporary increases of unemployment by reason of the switchover of production workers, but I make the same offer to my hon. Friend as I have already made in other directions, that if he will give me particulars, I will do my utmost in conjunction with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour to see that those workers are absorbed.

Sir Herbert Williams: Is it not the case that unemployment is inside the works and is being concealed by the official figures?

Oral Answers to Questions — CLOTHES RATIONING

Utility Clothing

Mr. Rhys Davies: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, as the best quality materials for making suits and dresses lasts longer than shoddy, and thereby is more likely to achieve the object he has in view of releasing work-people from non-essential industries, he will decide only to use such material in utility clothing?

Mr. Dalton: I have every sympathy with the object which my hon. friend has in mind. But, at the present stage of the war, we must make the best use of all available material and manufacturing capacity, and waste nothing.

Mr. Davies: Is not the trade itself, which knows more about this matter, satisfied that the suggestion can be carried out?

Mr. Dalton: Nobody in the trade would fall into the mistake of thinking that all

the material available was of the best quality. In this imperfect world not all the material is of the best quality, and we must use what we have to the best advantage.

Mr. Gallacher: Will there not soon be a lot of black shirts available in Italy?

Unsold Stocks (Coupons)

Sir Granville Gibson: asked the President of the Board of Trade (I) whether he is aware that there are accumulations of large quantities of low-priced utility clothes in the hands of makers, wholesalers and retailers, in which the public apparently have no buying interest; and does he intend to take steps to absorb or buy these stocks to send them to countries occupied by the Allies or grant licences to enable them to be exported to markets abroad;
(2) whether he is aware that owing to the fact that a coupon is equally valid in purchasing a low-priced or an expensive article, holders are refusing to purchase other than the most expensive types of boots, shoes and clothing, leaving heavy unsold stocks in the hands of wholesalers and retailers; and is he considering a method to meet the anomaly of coupon holders who normally buy medium-priced goods, and still prefer them, insisting on buying higher-priced goods because of the coupon value being the same in both cases?

Mr. Dalton: As I informed my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cambridge (Lieut.-Commander Tufnell) in reply to a similar Question on Tuesday last, I have received reports of the accumulation of stocks of certain types of rationed goods in the hands of traders, and I am now going into the matter.

Sir G. Gibson: Is there any reason why we should not grant facilities for the exportation of some of these accumulations to the Dominions, as has been done in the case of lower priced goods to another industry? Is the right hon. Gentleman considering the possibility of relating coupons to values, in order to encourage the purchase of these accumulations, instead of the higher priced and more expensive?

Mr. Dalton: I am going into the matter, and I hope to be able to make an announcement before long, but I would


rather not anticipate it. I can say to my hon. Friend that we do not want undue accumulations of any of these stocks of goods. That is common ground, but the question of preventing it does need investigation, and I am examining various alternatives.

Sir G. Gibson: Will the right hon. Gentleman examine the possibility of granting facilities for exportation?

Mr. Dalton: Yes, Sir, I am looking into it.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Would it not be highly dangerous if my right hon. Friend agreed to release these stocks coupon free at bargain prices?

Mr. Dalton: I have not given any undertaking to do any such thing, but I have said that I am considering the matter.

Agricultural Workers

Sir Dymoke White: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that military grey socks on sale to farm workers in Norfolk are, at least, four inches too short in the leg; that they work down into the boots and cause great discomfort to the wearers; and will he endeavour to rectify the matter?

Mr. Dalton: I am not sure what socks my hon. Friend has in mind. If they are military socks, their length is determined by Service specifications. All socks made for the civilian market must conform to the restrictions on length imposed in November, 1942, in order to save wool. I regret that, in view of the present stringency of supplies, I cannot see my way to relax these restrictions.

Sir D. White: Would the President of the Board of Trade agree to wear a pair of these socks over the week-end when he is doing land work, as it would perhaps make him more sympathetic?

Mr. Dalton: I should be very glad to make the experiment.

Mr. Shinwell: Will my right hon. Friend give coupons for them?

Mr. Dalton: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Higgs: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether it is his intention to issue supplementary clothing

coupons for agricultural workers in the near future?

Mr. Dalton: Agricultural workers have already received r o supplementary coupons for the present rationing period. I shall shortly be discussing with the Trades Union Congress and representatives of the employers the question of occupational supplements for the next period, which begins on 1st September.

Sir Joseph Lamb: May we be assured that people who are being asked to come and help on farms will not find difficulty sufficient to prevent their coming by not having coupons to get the necessary clothing?

Mr. Dalton: We will do our best to divide the supplies among the various workers.

Mrs. Hardie: Will my right hon. Friend consider reducing the number of coupons required for certain classes of goods?

Mr. Dalton: Yes, Sir, we will consider that suggestion.

Utility Cloth Order

II. Mr. Craik Henderson: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, having regard to the fact that the Goods and Services (Price Control) Utility Cloth Order (S.R. & O. No. 753 of 1943) amends or refers to an Order of 1941, three Orders of 1942 and to Orders of 1943; and, as the explanatory note is difficult of interpretation, will he consider issuing a simpler and more comprehensive explanatory note?

Mr. Dalton: I regret that my hon. Friend should consider that the explanatory note in this Order is not sufficiently clear, but I fear that, if it were more comprehensive, it would not be simpler.

Major Petherick: In view of the fact of the incomprehensibility of the first section of the explanatory note, will my right hon. Friend be good enough to issue an explanatory note of the explanatory note?

Mr. Dalton: I would do so if the trade wanted me to, but the trade—and after all it is for their benefit that these things are issued—find it quite clear. I have had no complaint from the trade.

Mr. Craik Henderson: Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that the trade


do not find this explanatory note either simple or easily understood, and that it has involved a considerable amount of research to find out what the explanatory note means?

Mr. Dalton: I have found that the trade are always ready to communicate with me if they have difficulty, and I have had no communication from anybody, except from Members of this House.

Clog Bottoms

I2. Mr. Wootton-Davies: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the shortage of clog bottoms in the Heywood and Radcliffe districts of Lancashire is still serious; and what is the reason for the difficulty encountered by war workers in securing these articles?

Mr. Dalton: As I have already informed the House, output of clog bottoms has risen by over 70 per cent. compared with 1941, and I am doing everything possible to raise it still further. I am at present in touch with the manufacturers with that object in view. I have also called for reports from my area distribution officers, in order to direct supplies to those areas which need them most.

Mr. Wootton-Davies: Is not my right hon. Friend aware that clogs are essentially Lancashire footwear, and that if he is regulating the supply to 8o per cent. in other parts of the country, Lancashire must go unduly short?

Mr. Dalton: My information is that the two largest producers of clog soles are Messrs. Maude and Son, of Hebden Bridge, and British Clog Soles, of Snaith, Yorkshire.

Coupon Allowance

Mr. Leslie Boyce: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, before deciding on a further general reduction in the number of clothing coupons, he will give particular consideration to the position of people who have only small wardrobes, which have already been seriously depleted and to the fact that many parents find it necessary to forgo their own coupons to provide essential clothing for schoolchildren and the requirements of the household?

Mr. Arthur Duckworth: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether

he is aware that, under the present allowance of coupons, the parents of two or more schoolchildren find it impossible to keep their children adequately provided with boots and shoes; and whether he will consider making some concession to meet these difficulties when allotting the number of coupons for the next year?

Mr. Dalton: I hope to be in a position to make a statement next week on the clothing ration for the next period, beginning 1st September.

Woollen Comforts, Merchant Navy

Vice-Admiral Taylor: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the Government have decided to terminate the existing procedure whereby woollen comforts sent to the ships of the Merchant Navy are sent coupon free; and what is the proposed alteration in the procedure?

Mr. Dalton: In order to ensure a fairer distribution and to prevent any waste of the comforts knitted for members of the Merchant Navy, I propose, at the request of my Noble Friend the Minister of War Transport, to include comforts in the rationing scheme for the Merchant Navy. For this purpose, an extra sixteen coupons, specially marked, will be issued to each seaman over and above his ration for other clothing. Seamen will be able to obtain free comforts, whenever available, against these coupons, which may also be used for purchases in the shops. The scheme will not in any way reduce the supply of comforts available.

Vice-Admiral Taylor: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that this procedure is necessary, and is he certain that it will not penalise the merchant seamen, both as regards the early supply of comforts and also for replacements? I would also ask him whether he is aware that it is a discriminatory measure against the seamen of the Merchant Navy that does not apply to the ratings of the Army, Navy or Air Force?

Mr. Speaker: That is rather a long question.

Mr. Dalton: My hon. and gallant Friend came to see me yesterday, and we had an interesting discussion on this subject. I understand that he afterwards went to the Ministry of War Transport and had further discussions there. As I


told him yesterday, and as I now say to the House, the last thing any of us wish to do is to penalise the Merchant Navy or to discriminate against them. So far as I am concerned, they are at the top of the list. If my hon. and gallant Friend has any further considerations which he would like to put to the Minister of War Transport and myself, we would be very glad to go into the matter again. My advice up to the present is that this scheme would benefit the merchant seamen and assure them of a fairer share of comforts, but I would be glad to look into it further.

Captain Peter Macdonald: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider extending this concession to men and officers serving on coastguard ships, who are also penalised?

Mr. Dalton: Perhaps my hon. and gallant Friend would put that down. It is a different question.

Commander Agnew: In view of the very arduous nature of the work which these men have to carry out, especially in the cold waters of the North, does the right hon. Gentleman not think that the equivalent of 16 coupons is a very small allowance to be obtained in a year, and nothing more?

Mr. Dalton: That must depend to some extent on the quantity of comforts coming forward. The number of r6 was arrived at with the idea that it would about absorb and fairly distribute the quantity of comforts coming forward. I will have that point looked into again.

Sales Methods, Lancashire and Yorkshire (Investigation)

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that large supplies of dress material, artificial silk, prints, cotton piece goods and woollen suitings are being released, coupon free, from certain Manchester warehouses for quick sale through underground channels in Lancashire and Yorkshire towns and at inflated prices; and what action he has taken to prosecute the promoters of this widespread practice?

Mr. Dalton: I am investigating these reports, and I invite my hon. Friend to give me the particulars of any cases that have come to his notice.

Mr. Walkden: If I present to my right hon. Friend a packet of samples, will he give an undertaking that if he can trace the wholesalers and manufacturers he will intern the whole lot or put them out of business for the duration of the war?

Mr. Dalton: I shall be very glad to take any action which can be sustained in the courts, but we must have evidence. My hon. Friend has been giving a good deal of publicity to this. I thought it would be convenient if he would meet my Chief Enforcement Officer to-day and give him some hard evidence.

Mr. Walkden: I shall be glad to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions — ALBERT PRODUCTS, LIMITED (SALE)

Mr. Burke: asked the President of the Board of Trade why the plant together with the goodwill and processes of the German-owned firm known as Albert Products, Limited, manufacturers of synthetic ingredients for lacquers and paints to the patents of Dr. Albert, which was taken over by the Custodian of Enemy Property, was sold to Imperial Chemical Industries, Limited, and not offered for sale to the trade in general?

Mr. Dalton: Sales of enemy-owned businesses by the Custodian of Enemy Property are exceptional. The factory of Albert Products was completely burned out, as a result of enemy action, in April, 1941, and was unable to resume production on its own resources. The decision to sell the business, which was taken fol2 lowing consultation with the Supply Departments, was known in the trade, since inquiries from a number of firms were received by the Custodian, who also approached others. A number of offers were submitted. I.C.I.'s offer was considered by the Custodian to be the best and was, therefore, accepted.

Mr. Burke: Is it not true that a former director of the firm who wanted to purchase the goodwill and processes was informed by the accountant acting for the Custodian of Enemy Property that they could not see anyone but I.C.I.? Does my right hon. Friend not realise that by putting the raw materials of an important industry through a bottleneck controlled by one or two important firms he is giving a very important advantage to them?

Mr. Dalton: If my hon. Friend has any further evidence regarding this case which he would like me to look at, I would be glad to do so, but I have answered the Question on the Order Paper. The answer is that a number of firms were made aware of this, and a number of offers were made. In the judgment of the Custodian of Enemy Property, with whom I do not wish unduly to interfere, this was the best offer and therefore was accepted.

Mr. Burke: Was this advertised in the usual way in the trade papers? Why was the general trade not given an opportunity?

Mr. Dalton: We had better get the facts right. It is not the general practice of the Custodian of Enemy Property to advertise these sales. Therefore the general practice was not departed from. I repeat that the Custodian of Enemy Property in the pursuit of his duties approached a number of firms, and a number of offers were made. In his judgment the offer of I.C.I. was the best, and therefore he accepted it.

Mr. Shinwell: Does my right hon. Friend not appreciate that this transaction is increasing the monopolistic powers of I.C.I., and that these powers may constitute a very grave menace to the State?

Mr. Dalton: In so far as that is so, it is a large question, which can be debated on another occasion. In this particular case the Custodian of Enemy Property judged, and I am not prepared to say that he was wrong, that this was the best offer in the national interest from the point of view of obtaining both a good price for these assets and also from the point of view of assisting production needed for the war effort. His action was taken after due consultation with the Supply Ministers who are responsible for producing the weapons of war.

Mr. A. Bevan: If it is not the practice to have these things advertised through the usual trade channels, ought that not to be done to prevent the possiblity of very grave irregularities?

Mr. Dalton: I do not believe that the Custodian of Enemy Property would be guilty of any irregularity; he is a very faithful and competent servant.

Mr. Bevan: I did not say that.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY

Flying and Parachute Duties (Injuries and Wounds, Pay)

Mr. Woodburn: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction which exists with regard to the regulation which allows 2s. a day to men who become paratroopers and by which they are deprived of this 2s. when they are wounded and no longer fit to jump; and whether this proficiency award can be made a grade in the Army and not a temporary increase?

The Secretary of State for War (Sir James Grigg): As stated in the answer to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) on 29th June, the wounded may now, subject to certain conditions, retain this additional pay for 91 days. It would be unjustifiable for them to retain this additional pay indefinitely after ceasing to be capable of performing the duties for which it is given.

Mr. Woodburn: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is something more than mere cash involved in this? It is the whole aspect of esprit de corpsof a man who feels a certain humiliation in being returned to a subordinate rank through no fault of his own.

Sir J. Grigg: The hon. Member will find that the practice is the same as in analogous cases not only in the Army but in the other Services.

Mr. Silverman: If a man in the course of his service suffers an injury which results in his losing 2s. a day, will the right hon. Gentleman consult with the Minister of Pensions to see whether that cannot be compensated for?

Sir J. Grigg: Perhaps the hon. Member will put that question down.

Requisitioned Property (Maintenance)

Rear-Admiral Beamish: asked the Secretary of State for War whether there is any settled policy with regard to the carrying-out of the usual periodic repairs, such as outside painting, in connection with properties held by his Department, many of which have been held for four years and may not have been painted for a similar length of time before requisitioning, with the result that the woodwork is decaying; and is he aware that owners of such properties look to him to


see that they do not suffer after the war from inability to get their properties repaired for their own occupation?

Sir J. Grigg: It is the policy of the Department to maintain its own buildings and other buildings held on requisition to a certain standard of war-time maintenance, which includes painting necessary for preservation. Owing, however, to the shortage of labour and materials, it is becoming increasingly difficult to implement this policy. The Department is aware of the expectations of owners of property, which are no doubt based on the provisions of the Compensation (Defence) Act, 1939, but my hon. and gallant Friend will be aware that many owners who still retain possession of their property cannot maintain it.

Read-Admiral Beamish: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that there is very real deterioration in the standard of maintenance of these much-valued properties and homes, and will he do everything he can to improve the standard?

Sir J. Grigg: I am aware of the deterioration. We will certainly do everything possible to maintain these properties, but I am bound to warn my hon. and gallant Friend that I do not think we shall succeeed in preventing some deterioration.

Mr. Thorne: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the War Office pinched three of our schools and that we had no say in the matter?

Sir H. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the shortage of materials is entirely the responsibility of the Ministry of Supply and the Minister of Labour?

Home Guard

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: asked the Secretary of State for War the financial saving involved during the first six months of this year through treating Home Guard officers as private soldiers in respect of medical treatment?

Sir J. Grigg: None of the records kept show the cost to the public of treating Home Guard officers as such, and I regret that the information asked for by my hon. and gallant Friend could not be obtained without considerable labour, which in present circumstances would hardly be justifiable.

Sir T. Moore: Since there is apparently no saving involved and no other reason for this anomaly, will my right hon. Friend continue to treat Home Guard officers as private soldiers while expecting them to bear the responsibilities of officers?

Sir J. Grigg: That is another question, which my hon. and gallant Friend might raise on another occasion.

Major Manningham-Buller: asked the Secretary of Stale for War the number of members of the Home Guard who have been convicted by courts-martial of offences which were triable as felonies or misdemeanours by the civil courts; and whether, as a court-martial cannot place an accused on probation or bind him over to be of good behaviour, he will give instructions that in future Home Guards charged with civil offences shall be brought before the civil courts and not charged under Section 4 of the Army Act before courts-martial?

Sir J. Grigg: The answer to the first part of the Question is nine. It is sometimes desirable to try a Home Guard by court-martial for a civil offence which he commits in relation to his position and duties as a Home Guard, but the regulations require that authority for such a trial must be obtained from the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief. I do not think any further instructions are necessary.

Major Manningham-Buller: Is not the least sentence that a court-martial can pass on a Home Guard member for such offences a sentence to detention?

Sir J. Grigg: I am not sure about that.

Voluntary Aid Detachments

Mr. Woodburn: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction existing in the Army Voluntary Aid Detachment Nursing Service at the disabilities they suffer compared with the Naval and Royal Air Force Hospital Service; and whether he is prepared to assimilate the conditions of Army nurses to the more favourable conditions of the other Services?

Sir J. Grigg: My hon. Friend is no doubt referring not to the present position but to the recommendations made by the committee which reported on Voluntary Aid


Detachments. I have at present nothing tc, add on this subject to the statements previously made.

Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers

Sir Robert Young: asked the Secretary of State for War (I) whether all officers, whether Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers or infantry, etc., go through the same officer cadet training units and have the same training; whether there is any training of a specialised character given to Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers officers not given to the others, or vice versa; and, if so, what is the difference in each section that are being trained;
(2) the difference in training given to probable officers of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers from that given to all other probable officers of other corps passing through the same officer cadets training unit; and whether there are separate training establishments from those of the Royal Engineers, Royal Corps of Signals and Royal Army Ordnance Corps or any other Army corps?

Sir J. Grigg: There are different officer cadet training units for different arms and corps of the Service, and the nature of the training and the length of the courses vary accordingly. R.E.M.E. cadets who do not possess the necessary knowledge of their technical duties and of workshop administration are sent on an r8-week course of special technical training for the R.E.M.E. After this course they are sent to an O.C.T.U. to learn their duties as officers. There are also at this O.C.T.U. cadets for R.E.M.E. who already have the necessary technical knowledge and do not need the technical course to which I have referred, and also some cadets for other arms of the service who, owing to their military knowledge and experience, do not need the full course at the O.C.T.U. of their arm or corps. The course at this O.C.T.U. has not hitherto included any subjects peculiar to the R.E.M.E., but in future the course for R.E.M.E. cadets will be lengthened and will include certain non-technical subjects peculiar to their corps.

Sir R. Young: Seeing that this is a combatant corps, will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the chances of promotion for those who pass as officers are the same

as those for officers in the Royal Engineers? Will he remember that the late Lord Kitchener was a Royal Engineer?

Sir J. Grigg: I am afraid I could not possibly, in any circumstances, give a guarantee that the rates of promotion in every unit or corps of the Army will be completely uniform.

Middle East (Leave Facilities)

Mr. Hewlett: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that both officers and soldiers serving in the Middle East are often unable for financial reasons to take even short periods of local leave; and, in view of the high prices for everything in the areas concerned, will he consider increasing the facilities of serving men for cheap and beneficial rest and recreation?

Sir J. Grigg: Free travel to leave centres is provided for officers and other ranks in the Middle East. I gave an outline of the arrangements made at these centres by the military authorities and by voluntary organisations to provide accommodation and meals at reasonable prices in an answer I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Banfield) on 4th May. The importance of providing facilities is, I know, fully appreciated by the authorities in the Middle East, and the facilities are continually being extended and improved in so far as the pressure on existing means of transport and the shortage of materials permit.

Eritrea and Italian Somaliland (Administration)

Mr. Astor: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he has considered representations made to him regarding the publication as a White Paper, or otherwise, on his administration of the former Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland; and whether he can make a statement?

Sir J. Grigg: I think my hon. Friend's wishes will be met by a book which the Ministry of Information are now preparing on the administration of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland during the last two years.

Mr. Astor: When is it likely to be published?

Sir J. Grigg: Not for a couple of months, I am afraid.

Newspaper Distribution, North Africa

Mr. Astor: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the distribution of newspapers, including those papers specially produced for the troops, has often been unsatisfactory in North Africa; who is responsible for the distribution of papers, and whether he will inquire into this question?

Sir J. Grigg: The military authorities in North Africa are responsible for the distribution of all newspapers. I can assure my hon. Friend that they appreciate the need for providing as many as possible, and have shown great enterprise in providing what papers they can for the troops with the very limited transport available to forward areas.

Mr. Astor: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, while excellent papers are being produced, the system for distributing them to troops in the forward areas has not been satisfactory? Will he look into the matter?

Sir J. Grigg: I did look into it on the spot, and I cannot accept the statement of my hon. Friend that the system of distribution is not now satisfactory. It is, of course, always difficult to get enough paper to produce sufficient copies.

Mr. Turton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the last 18 months this question of the distribution of newspapers has been carried out first by the Signals Corps, then by the Welfare Branch, then by the R.A.S.C., and then by the Ordnance Corps? Does that not show a certain amount of confusion?

Sir J. Grigg: I do not think that it shows anything except that continual efforts are being made to improve distribution.

Major John Morrison: Is my right hon. Friend not aware that among the troops there is considerable feeling that they get their news very late?

Sir J. Grigg: I think my information is more up to date than that of my hon. and gallant Friend, and I am not aware of any such thing.

Sir I. Albery: Which system was in force when my right hon. Friend visited North Africa?

Sir J. Grigg: The latest one.

Sir I. Albery: Which was that?

Service Prisons and Detention Camps (Inquiry)

Mr. Fraser: asked the Secretary of State for War whether it is his intention that the investigation to be conducted into the conditions in military detention camps should extend to those detention camps overseas?

Sir J. Grigg: No, Sir.

Mr. Fraser: Why will not the investigation extend to detention camps overseas?

Sir J. Grigg: That is a small part of the problem. It would, moreover, prolong the inquiry if the members of the Commission had to travel to detention camps abroad.

Mr. Shinwell: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that conditions in detention camps overseas are satisfactory?

Sir J. Grigg: I would like notice of that Question. I have had no complaints about them. I visited one in North Africa, and in that particular case conditions were at least satisfactory.

Officers' Retired Pay

General Sir George Jeffreys: asked the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the Army Order 324 of 1919, that the rates, of officers' retired pay should be subject to an increase up to 20 per cent. if the cost of living should rise, and in view of the stabilisation of these rates in 1934 at 9½ per cent. below the basic rates, he will, in view of the rise in the cost of living since the latter year, consider whether the present rate of payment is adequate?

Sir J. Grigg: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the reply given to him by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 4th August last, of which I will send him a copy.

Sir G. Jeffreys: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in view of the Army Order in question, it amounts to a breach of faith to reduce the pension when the cost of living goes down and to fail to raise it when the cost of living goes up?

Sir J. Grigg: I imagine that the possibility of that was before the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the decision to which I have referred was reached.

Sir William Davison: Is it not very desirable that the present Government and the present Secretary of State should look into the matter and not allow this injustice to continue?

Sir J. Grigg: The matter has been looked into. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a decision, which was a Government decision.

War Office Personnel

Captain Cobb: asked the Secretary of State for War the pensions and other emoluments received on retirement by civil servants employed at the War Office and how they compare with those received by Regular officers and other ranks of equivalent grades?

Sir J. Grigg: Owing to the differing conditions of service and ages of retirement and the absence of any precise equivalence between the various grades in the Civil Service and the various Army ranks, I regret that a valid comparison cannot be drawn between the pensions drawns by civil servants and those drawn by military officers and other ranks.

Mr. William Brown: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is now in a position to make a statement on the Report of the Cozens-Hardy Committee on staffing of mixed military and civilian establishments of the War Department?

Sir J. Grigg: As the answer is rather long, I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the statement:

The recommendations of the Cozens-Hardy Committee have now been considered by the War Office and have been generally approved. The Committee's Report is, as I have said before, a departmental Report, and will not be published, but I am glad to have this opportunity of informing the House of the main conclusion reached by the Committee.

The Committee recommended the principles which should govern the fixing of the establishments of War Department outstations. Broadly this involves the posting of military and A.T.S. officers and other ranks in sufficient numbers to provide for the general military control

and direction of the establishments, to ensure adequate mobility and flexibility of the staff and to provide for the efficient training of military personnel for service overseas, and the filling of the balance of the establishments by civilians. These principles will have to be worked out in detail for each outstation and this is being put in hand.

The application of these principles which are an extension of existing practice, while they will ensure that there is an adequate military complement, will result in the replacement of a considerable number of military personnel by civilians, if suitable civilians are available. How far they will be, experience will show, but it will only be in default of suitable civilians that military and A.T.S. personnel will be employed in the civilian complement of the establishments.

In this connection, steps will be taken to discover and make full use of all available talent in the existing civilian staff. I take this opportunity of voicing my appreciation of the loyal and devoted service rendered throughout the war in the various War Department outstation establishments by that staff, both men and women, whose work has been of vital importance to the Army in the field, and of expressing my hope that there will be found among them a good number who are fitted for posts of greater responsibility than they now hold. I should also like to pay a tribute to the military and A.T.S. staff of these outstations who have carried out their work in the face of many difficulties.

In order to make the fullest possible use of our man-power it is proposed to employ suitable A.T.S. officers where possible in place of military officers in the posts which under the Committee's proposals require to be filled by military. These A.T.S. officers will be carefully selected and in as much as their work will bring them into touch with and place them in charge of civilians as well as soldiers, steps will be taken to see that they are made acquainted with the place and functions of Whitley Councils in the Civil Service.

I hope that the measures outlined above will result in the best use being made of our man- and woman-power in these establishments.

Family Allowance

Captain Cobb: asked the Secretary of State for War the number of cases where the payment of family allowance has been stopped as a result of the reporting of the cessation of normal domestic relations; and in what proportion of such cases the soldier has been held subsequently legally liable to maintain his wife and family?

Major Manningham-Buller: asked the Secretary of State for War the number of soldiers subjected to disciplinary measures for failure to report the cessation of normal domestic relations between them and their wives and families?

Sir J. Grigg: I regret that the figures asked for are not readily available.

Judge Advocate General's Office

Mr. Erskine-Hill: asked the Secretary of State for War the number of officers in the Judge Advocate General's department and outside it who are normally required to read through the proceedings of each trial by field general court-martial held in this country?

Sir J. Grigg: The proceedings of trials by field general court-martial are normally reviewed by the confirming officer, by one superior military authority, by an officer of the Judge Advocate General's branch at Command Headquarters and finally in the office of the Judge Advocate General in London.

Mr. Erskine-Hill: Will my right hon. Friend consider whether the simplification of the system will lead to a saving in man-power?

Sir J. Grigg: That really arises on the next Question, where I am asked about the numbers involved. The man-power is no very large, but the important consideration in the matter of courts-martial is that the system should be such as to ensure fairness and justice. In point of fact, the procedure has been cut down somewhat since the war started by stationing officers of the Judge Advocate General's Department at Command Headquarters.

Mr. Silverman: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, in view of the absence of any right of appeal from the decisions of courts-martial, that the further cutting down of the system of review would be

regarded with grave anxiety by a great many people?

Sir J. Grigg: The hon. Member is quite wrong is saying that there is no right of appeal.

Major Lloyd: asked the Secretary of State for War the number of officers now employed in the military department of the Judge Advocate General's Office in Great Britain; the number of colonels, lieutenant-colonels and majors so employed; and how their numbers compare with those of August, 1940?

Sir J. Grigg: There are at present 65 officers employed in the Military Department of the Judge Advocate General's Office in Great Britain and Northern Ire land. One is a Brigadier, five are Lieutenant-Colonels and 12 are Majors. In August, 1940, 42 officers were so employed of which one was a Colonel, two were Lieutenant-Colonels and eight were Majors.

Major Lloyd: Does my right hon. Friend agree that this increase is partly due to the employment of these officers to prosecute Home Guards in cases that might well be tried by civil courts?

Sir J. Grigg: The total number of Home Guard trials by courts-martial is only 104, and the officers concerned have taken them in their stride without any addition to their numbers.

Courts-Martial Committee (Report)

Commander Galbraith: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will now consider revealing the Government's views on the recommendations contained in the Report of the Army and Air Force Courts-Martial Committee; and when he proposes to give effect to any of its recommendations?

Sir J. Grigg: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the prefatory note in Command Paper 6200 in which the Report was published.

Commander Galbraith: Will not my right hon. Friend consider that the changes recommended should be introduced now that we have such a very largely increased Army and that A.T.S. and also Home Guards are liable to trial by courts-martial?

Sir J. Grigg: No, Sir.

Sicily (Administration)

Mr. Vernon Bartlett: asked the Secretary of State for War whether Sicilians are debarred from any contact with Italian refugee political organisations?

Sir J. Grigg: As the Prime Minister stated in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. I. Thomas) on 21st July, no political activities by the local inhabitants can be countenanced under the Allied Military Government established in Occupied Sicily.

Mr. Bartlett: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that nature abhors a vacuum in politics, and as these people have not been able to hear anything of democracy for 21 years, should not they be allowed to do so as soon as it is reasonably possible?

Sir J. Grigg: The part of the government of Sicily for which I am responsible is the military government, and the important considerations in a military government are military ones.

Mr. Bevan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this political attitude of the administration in Sicily is taking a good deal of the glamour off our military victories?

Mr. Shinwell: Would the right hon. Gentleman explain why this association between the Sicilians and Italian political refugee organisations is going to conflict with the military government? Will he explain that?

Sir J. Grigg: Military requirements and whatever the Commander-in-Chief thinks necessary for military safeguards are paramount.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: We cannot have a Debate on this question.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRISONERS OF WAR

Captain Poole: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that Italian prisoners of war employed in the Tamworth district are able freely to purchase in their canteen matches, razor blades, hair cream, and other articles which are not available to the civilian population; and will he see that, in giving humane treatment to such prisoners, they

are not placed in a more advantageous position than the civil population in these matters?

Sir J. Grigg: Canteens for prisoners of war are allotted very limited supplies of the articles mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend. In the case referred to, it appears that the two prisoners concerned obtained much more than their share of the supplies in their canteen, and their fellow prisoners must, therefore, have gone short. This is being further investigated.

Captain Poole: Does the Minister realise that the public feel very strongly on this matter, and will he see that there is no further coddling of these prisoners, which is definitely going on?

Sir J. Grigg: I think the hon. and gallant Member might await the result of the investigation which I mentioned.

Sir John Mellor: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will make a statement with regard to the despatch of food parcels addressed to individual prisoners of war?

Sir J. Grigg: As the answer is rather long, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the statement

Having in mind experience from the last war, His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom have consistently refused permission for the despatch of individually addressed food parcels to prisoners of war, and they have the agreement and support of all His Majesty's Governments in this policy. They have also discouraged despatch of such parcels from other countries to British prisoners of war. This policy was announced in the Press in November, 1940, and again in November, 1942.

As the House is aware, the War Organisation of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John despatches to camps in Europe through the International Red Cross Committee food parcels on a scale which should provide one for each man each week. On the whole, the aim of getting one parcel a week to each man has been achieved, though success has not been complete (largely owing to transport difficulties between Geneva and the camps). To permit additional food to be despatched


addressed to individuals would lead to waste of food; and there is evidence that enemy Governments would not hesitate to use any such waste as an excuse for reducing the already inadequate rations supplied by them. Moreover, transport between this country and the camps is already heavily loaded with essential traffic, and any unnecessary addition to this traffic would tend to cause delays and interruptions in the regular supply.

The standard food parcels despatched by the British Red Cross are carefully designed to provide an adequate supplement to the rations provided by the enemy Governments together with a reasonable variety of food.

Truck Accident, Maidstone (Compensation)

Mr. Thorne: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he can give any information about the case of an Army truck that mounted the pavement in Lower Stone Street, Maidstone, when a three months old baby was crushed to death in her perambulator and the mother and three other people were injured; and whether compensation will be paid to the people injured?

Sir J. Grigg: Inquiries are being made into the circumstances of this accident, and the claims for compensation which have reached the War Department are now being considered.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Air Training Corps (Glasgow Schools)

Major Lloyd: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is aware that the schools under the control of the Glasgow Corporation are forbidden to form units of the Air Training Corps and that the use of school premises is denied to Air Training Corps cadets; and whether he will consult with the Glasgow Corporation with a view to altering this state of affairs?

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. T. Johnston): I am advised that the Glasgow Corporation, by granting the use of accommodation and other facilities, have actively assisted in the development of open units of the Air Training Corps—that is, units whose membership is not restricted to boys of particular schools. But they

decline to assist closed units, that is, units whose membership is restricted to particular schools.

Major Lloyd: Is my right hon. Friend aware what a great handicap this is to organisers of the Air Training Corps in Glasgow; and would he exercise every possible pressure to try to do away with this bigoted attitude of the Glasgow Corporation?

Mr. Johnston: It is obvious that there is a very extreme difference of opinion on this matter. It is not confined to Glasgow; there is at least one other city which takes the same view.

Sir W. Davison: Is there not a war on and should not that fact be given consideration?

Mr. Kenneth Lindsay: As with one exception this attitude is unique in Britain, and as 5o per cent. of the officers are teachers themselves and the training is a good technical training, will my right hon. Friend take some steps in the matter?

Mr. Johnston: We have made the most exhaustive inquiries as to the attitude of the Glasgow Corporation—

Mr. Denville: Why not make an order?

Mr. Johnston: We have no power to make orders in this matter.

Hon. Members: Take powers.

Mr. Austin Hopkinson: rose—

Mr. Speaker: This, again, is developing into a Debate.

Housing

Mr. McNeil: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland on how many of the recently allocated 1,000 houses work has begun; for how many tenders have been approved; and if tenders for any have not yet been submitted to the approval of the Scottish Office?

Mr. Johnston: I am advised that on more than 25 per cent. of the houses work has actually begun. Tenders for 742 houses have been approved, and I expect to approve tenders on 128 more to-morrow. Tenders for 64 are expected shortly. Tenders for 66 houses have been rejected because of the excessive costs, and the local authorities concerned have been advised to make fresh tenders.

Mr. McNeil: In the event of local authorities, in these cases where excessive tenders have been made, failing to get what my right hon. Friend must consider a reasonable figure, what is he going to do in the circumstances?

Mr. Johnston: In the first instance I want to make perfectly sure that these excessive tenders have been properly scrutinised. In one case tenders have been for £1,655 per house, exclusive of land, roads, drains and extra underbuilding.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: Are any of these houses being built by the Ministry of Works, and, if so, at what price?

Mr. Johnston: The answer is in the negative.

Educational Reconstruction

Mr. McNeil: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he intends to publish a White Paper on Educational Reconstruction in Scotland, and when?

Mr. Johnston: The Advisory Council on Education in Scotland are presently engaged upon five remits, the terms of which I communicated to the House during last Wednesday's Debate. These remits cover a wide field, and I feel that I could not usefully consider the question of a White Paper on Educational Reconstruction in Scotland until I have received the reports on these remits.

Mr. McNeil: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that there is some anxiety among Scottish Members on this side of the House in case a Debate is forced on us before we have had an ample opportunity of considering a White Paper? We have no guarantee when these remits are to be exhausted.

Mr. Johnston: I am advised that there will be no undue delay.

Mr. Boothby: Is it the intention to issue a White Paper when the Report of the Educational Committee is received?

Mr. Johnston: I think the likelihood is that we shall, but it will only be courteous to the Advisory Committee to await their Report.

Mr. Sloan: Will there be a delay of 12 months after the English Bill before we have an Education Bill for Scotland?

Mr. Johnston: I cannot admit that any interval between the two Bills will be a delay because of the different position in the two countries.

Parents Petition, Greenock

Mr. McNeil: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he has considered the petition from parents of children previously attending St. Lawrence School, Greenock; and whether he is now in a position to make any statement thereon?

Mr. Johnston: The answer to the first part of the Question is in the affirmative. As regards the second part, proposals recently submitted by the Renfrewshire education authority for the erection of prefabricated huts in order to restore full-time education for all the pupils of St. Lawrence boys' and girls' schools are now under discussion with the Ministry of Works. I expect that a decision will be reached at an early date.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME GUARD OFFICERS

Sir T. Moore: asked the Prime Minister whether he has considered the conflicting and inconsistent decisions reached by the Treasury and the War Office in regard to the treatment of Home Guard officers who are regarded by the former as officers and the latter as private soldiers; and whether he will take steps to end this anomaly?

The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee): I am not sure what my hon. and gallant Friend has in mind, but I am informed there is no inconsistency of principle in the attitude of different Government Departments towards Home Guard officers.

Sir T. Moore: If my right hon. Friend had studied my Questions over the past year, he would have known exactly what I have in mind, and what I would like to know is, Has he really consulted the Prime Minister with regard to this Question, and, if he has, is the Prime Minister, with his vast experience and wide knowledge, really prepared to condone this anachronism and stupidity?

Mr. Attlee: I am afraid I have not read the hon. and gallant Member's Questions recently. I was not aware, and I do not think the Prime Minister was aware to what he referred.

Oral Answers to Questions — STATUTORY RULES AND ORDERS

Sir H. Williams: asked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that in Orders issued by the Ministry of Food there are restrictions on buying and selling, for example, in the Emergency Powers (Defence) Food (Canned Fish) Order (S.R. & O. No. 962 of 1943), whereas in Orders issued by the Ministry of Supply, for example, the Emergency Powers (Defence) Raw Materials (Talc and Pyrophyllite) Order (S.R. & O. No. 960 of 1943), there are restrictions on acquiring goods, and as, from the text of the Orders, buying and acquiring appear to have the same meaning and, as the use of different words for the same purpose is calculated to involve the courts in difficulties of interpretation, will he issue instructions as to the drafting of future Orders?

Mr. Attlee: No, Sir. The hon. Member has missed the refinements. The difference between the meanings of the expressions "buying" and "acquiring" is well known. The latter includes transactions where no purchase is involved, e.g. barter transactions. The difference is well illustrated in the two Orders to which the hon. Member refers. The Canned Fish Order (S.R. & O. 1943 No. 962) is a Maximum Prices Order and is therefore rightly confined to purchase transactions. On the other hand the Raw Materials (Talc and Pyrophyllite) Order (S.R. & O. 1943 No. 960) is intended to control all acquisitions whether by purchase or otherwise. Hence the difference in the terms used in the two Orders.

Sir H. Williams: Can my right hon. Friend give me any example of anything that is acquired otherwise than under the second Order he mentioned? [Laughter.] Seriously, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that it is most desirable that the courts should not be embarrassed by using different words to express the same meaning?

Mr. Attlee: I have explained to the hon. Member that these words are used because they cover different things. It is not the case that the courts have been embarrassed.

Sir H. Williams: Then will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what different things can possibly arise?

Oral Answers to Questions — 1914–18 WAR (MEDAL)

Mr. Gledhill: asked the Prime Minister whether he will now consider issuing a medal or badge to those who served in the last war but not overseas?

Mr. Attlee: No, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — B.B.C. (MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY)

Mr. Douglas: asked the Prime Minister whether he will consider legislation for altering the status and constitution of the British Broadcasting Corporation so as to make a Minister wholly answerable for the activities of this subsidised Corporation?

Mr. Attlee: No, Sir. No such change is contemplated at the present time.

Mr. Douglas: Is my right hon. Friend aware that when complaints are made to the B.B.C. complainants are told that Government policy is being carried out and that when Questions are asked of the Ministry of Information they disclaim responsibility?

Mr. Attlee: While a certain amount of control is necessary during war-time, it has been the endeavour of the Government to keep the B.B.C. as something independent of the Government.

Mr. De la Bère: Is not the whole thing a glorious loophole of evasion?

Sir I. Albery: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the B.B.C. is entirely financed from public funds under the control of the Ministry of Information, and is not the Ministry therefore completely responsible for all actions of the B.B.C.?

Mr. Attlee: No, Sir, the B.B.C. is financed mainly by licences. The position has always been that while, of course, the money comes from the public, a distinction has been made and there has always been an endeavour to keep the B.B.C. something which is separate from a mere Government organisation.

Sir I. Albery: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries into the finances of the B.B.C.?

Oral Answers to Questions — OVERSEAS FORCES (HOME LEAVE)

Mr. John Dugdale: asked the Prime Minister whether men returning home from more than a year's service overseas may be granted a longer period of leave than 14 days?

Mr. Attlee: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War will, I understand, be in a position to make a statement in the next series of Sittings.

Mr. Dugdale: Can we be assured that whatever statement is made will cover the three Services?

Mr. Attlee: I will take that up with my right hon. Friend.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Estate Duty (Home Guard)

Sir J. Mellor: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the rule which limits pensions payable in respect of Home Guards to the scale applicable to private soldiers, he will take steps to amend Section 8 (I) of the Finance Act, 1894, so as to exempt from Estate Duty the property of Home Guards, killed on active service, in the same manner as the property of private soldiers is exempted?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Kingsley Wood): I am afraid I could not see my way to adopt my hon. Friend's proposal. I would remind my hon. Friend that the estate of a Home Guard who is killed on duty or dies as a result of wounds received or disease contracted on duty is entitled to the same relief from Estate Duty as is given to all members of the Forces by Section 38 of the Finance Act, 1924. The effect of this is to exempt from duty the first £5,000 of his estate and to give a relief on the remainder the amount of which is dependent on his age, provided only that his estate passes to his widow or certain near relations. I could not see my way to adopt a proposal which exempted the whole of his estate unconditionally.

Sir J. Mellor: Why should Home Guards be treated as private soldiers for one purpose and not for another? How does my right hon. Friend justify this anomaly?

Sir K. Wood: I am dealing with the Question on the Paper.

Sir T. Moore: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can give an estimate of the amount he anticipates receiving in death duties from the estates of Home Guard officers during the current financial year?

Sir K. Wood: I am afraid it is impossible to furnish the estimate which my hon. and gallant Friend desires.

Sir T. Moore: Does my right hon. Friend really think it is worth while continuing this ridiculous anachronism of a Home Guard officer being an officer one day and a private soldier another day?

E.P.T. and National Defence Contribution (Arrears)

Mr. Thorne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the total amount of arrears of Excess Profits Tax and National Defence Contributions up till the nearest available date?

Sir K. Wood: Assessments to Excess Profits Tax and National Defence Contribution are based upon the profits of trading concerns for the particular accounting periods for which accounts are made up and accordingly the assessments are made continuously throughout the year and in this respect differ from Income Tax assessments which are usually made en bloc. Moreover, the Excess Profits Tax and National Defence Contribution are not payable like the Income Tax on a fixed date for all businesses but are payable one month after date of assessment. It is not, therefore, practicable to say how much Excess Profits Tax and National Defence Contribution is in arrear at present. It is estimated, however, that at the 31st March last the total amount in assessment was about £215,000,000 of which a considerable sum has since been paid or discharged and the balance would include a considerable amount of duty under assessments that are subject to appeal or adjustment.

Mr. Thorne: I take it that the Chancellor knows what will happen to me if I do not pay my Income Tax?

Old Age Pensioners

Mr. Kendall: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the increased cost of living and the consequent hardship on non-contributory old age pensioners, and the desire of certain charitable institutions to alleviate such hardship


through the payment of additional grants, he will amend the existing legislation so that old age pensioners are not penalised by having their pensions reduced by the amount of the additional charitable grant made to them?

Sir K. Wood: The question of amending the means limit for non-contributory old age pensions was considered before the Bill for the Pensions and Determination of Needs Act, 1943, was introduced, and I cannot see my way to introduce further legislation on this subject.

War Savings Campaigns (Commission)

Colonel Burton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the amounts payable in commission to banks, or other institutions or persons, on subscriptions to "Warships" Weeks, "War Weapons" Weeks. and "Wings for Victory" Weeks?

Sir K. Wood: No special commissions were payable in respect of subscriptions to Government issues in "Wings for Victory" Weeks, or in the earlier similar series of Weeks. The normal commissions would he paid to banks and stockbrokers at the rates and subject to the conditions set out in the prospectuses of the various issues. It would not be possible, without a disproportionate expenditure of time and trouble, to estimate the amount of such commission paid on sums raised in special Weeks.

Employed Capital (Standard Profits)

Sir Granville Gibson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that, under threat of compulsion, the Ministry of Supply are endeavouring to obtain the agreement of certain essential industries, including the leather industry, to a figure for the maximum percentage of profit permissible on their computation of the capital employed or at a lower rate of profit on turnover which in many cases is so low as to render it impossible to attain to the standard profit of such firms; and is such action being taken on instructions from the Treasury or in order to put such a policy of profit restriction below pre-war level into operation?

Sir K. Wood: I am aware that the Ministry of Supply has been in negotiation with certain sections of the leather industry in order to arrange for control over the prices of leather (the bulk of which is

needed for Government contracts and utility footwear) with reference to what is regarded as a reasonable average return on the capital employed in those sections of the industry. The principle of controlling prices in such fields by reference to return on employed capital is one which has been frequently explained to Parliament. The standard profit of a company for the purposes of Excess Profits Tax is not regarded as any criterion of what should be the return to be allowed on employed capital in such cases, as I explained at some length in the Debate in the House on 7th October, 1942.

Sir G. Gibson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Treasury is responsible for the policy which has been carried out by the Ministry of Supply and that prices have been fixed on such a basis that it is physically impossible for an efficient firm to earn anywhere near the standard rate of profit? Was not E.P.T. designed to take excess profits?

Sir K. Wood: I have already explained the position as regards E.P.T. and also the policy of the Government, but if my hon. Friend would like me to look at any particular case he has in mind, I shall be glad to do so.

Lira (Exchange Rate)

Sir H. Williams: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps are to be taken to prevent persons who have bought 480 lire for a £1 note in North Africa selling 400 lire for a £1 note in Sicily?

Sir K. Wood: Traffic between North Africa and Sicily will for some time to come be largely confined to Service personnel who, in the case of British Forces, are not paid in lire. The danger to which my hon. Friend refers is a real one in theory, but its effects are being limited by administrative measures, and certain further steps, of which I will inform the House in due course, have already been put in train to remove it.

Sir H. Williams: Is this a device for obtaining for no charge at all over 8o lire to the pound? Would my right hon. Friend describe this transaction as a sample of the definition of acquiring given by the Deputy Prime Minister a few minutes ago to Question No. 46?

Mr. Austin Hopkinson: Is it not the case that a far more serious danger exists


than that? Anyone having a pound can buy 400 lire; with that 400 lire he then buys 4 dollars; with the 4 dollars he then buys £2 on the black market; with the £2 he then buys 800 lire; with the 800 lire he then buys 8 dollars; with the 8 dollars he then—[Interruption.]

Mr. G. Strauss: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the main considerations which induced His Majesty's Government, in co-operation with the United States Government, to fix the new lira rate at a parity of 400 to the £?

Sir K. Wood: In fixing the new rate account was taken, so far as was possible, of all the relevant economic factors, including the level of local prices and wages. I do not think that a more detailed discussion would be an advantage at the moment. The position is being kept under close observation, but I am sure that my hon. Friend would not expect the matter to be reviewed at the present time. Meanwhile, no information has reached me to indicate that any other rate might have been more appropriate. I would emphasise that in this, as in other preparations for military offensives, essential decisions must be taken in advance in the light of such information and advice as is available in conditions which preclude wide discussion.

Mr. Strauss: Are not the rates which have actually been fixed wholly out of accord with the price levels in the two countries? Is there not some further explanation which the right hon. Gentleman can give about these figures, which appear on the face of it to be out of accord with existing facts?

Sir K. Wood: No, Sir, I think that on the whole the best arrangement has been made at the present time. This is a matter which has to be arranged with the United States Government. On the last Occasion I referred to this subject I explained that it was provisional.

Mr. Stokes: In view of the fact that the rate of exchange prior to the war was of the order of about 70 lire to the pound, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that fixing it at 400 to the pound really amounts to loot and is likely to bring the Allies into disrepute?

Sir K. Wood: No, Sir, there is no foundation for such a statement.

Sir I. Albery: Is not this matter of great importance in view of future operations? Cannot some machinery be invented by which the Allies will jointly fix suitable rates for all occupied territories?

United Kingdom Commercial Corporation (Expenses)

Mr. Douglas: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the cost of functions such as luncheon parties given by the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation, Limited, are charged, either directly or indirectly, to public funds?

Sir K. Wood: The expenses of this Corporation merge into its profit and loss account, which is entirely for the account of the Exchequer. His Majesty's Government see no reason to object to the particular expenses alluded to, which were not incurred without due prior consultation.

Mr. Douglas: Are the transactions of this body subject to any public control whatsoever?

Sir K. Wood: Yes, Sir. As I have said, the expenses of this Corporation merge into its profit and loss account, which is entirely for the account of the Exchequer. His Majesty's Government see no reason to object to the particular expenses alluded to, which were not incurred without due prior consultation.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Will the Chancellor examine the whole question of the expenses allotted to officials of this organisation?

Sir K. Wood: That is another matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — LOCAL AUTHORITIES (POWERS)

Major Procter: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that various Government Departments have already taken powers, or are taking powers, to diminish the exercise of the powers of local authorities; and whether, to avert the destruction of successful local self-government in the country, he will restrain Departmental action of which complaint is made until independent inquiry has established its need and utility?

Sir K. Wood: I do not know to what my hon. and gallant Friend refers, but it appears to me that the position is sufficiently safeguarded by the fact that changes of a permanent character in the powers of local authorities would require legislative sanction.

Major Procter: Is my right hon. Friend aware that fire brigades and police forces have been taken over by Whitehall?

Mr. Muff: Is the Chancellor aware that local authorities throughout the country are very much disturbed about the encroachment on their powers by some of the Departments of State?

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS (STAFFS)

Mr. De la. Bère: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the inflation of Whitehall staffs, he will take immediate steps to decrease the numbers employed and give an assurance that a drastic cut will be made at the earliest possible date on the conclusion of hostilities?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Assheton): I can assure my hon. Friend that the need for economy in manpower in Government offices, wherever they may be situated, is fully appreciated by the Government and that close and continuous attention is being given to the matter. I have noted the second part of the Question, though it does not arise at present,

Mr. De la Bère: Is my hon. Friend aware of the shocking waste of manpower which has gone on year after year? Why is not this matter really attended to? Nothing is done at all.

Mr. Assheton: I would point out to my hon. Friend that a considerable amount of official time is absorbed in answering his numerous Questions.

Mr. De la Bère: Surely it is the duty of the Treasury to prevent inflation.

Oral Answers to Questions — SHIPBUILDING (JARROW AND NORTHUMBERLAND)

Mr. David Adams: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, with a view to expanding current shipbuilding

output and protecting our post-war interests in this industry, he will open, at the earliest date, Jarrow and Northumberland shipyards?

The Financial Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. George Hall): The case for the opening of both the Jarrow and Northumberland shipyards has been put before the Admiralty by the public representatives of Jarrow, Tynemouth and Wallsend Boroughs and has been very carefully considered. I can add nothing to the statement which was made recently to the representatives of these boroughs to the effect that there is at present no immediate prospect of either yard being opened. The preparation of either yard and the diversion of labour to man it would lessen rather than increase the efficient deployment of the industrial resources available for shipbuilding. The case which was put forward for the opening of these yards included the suggestion that the necessary skilled and unskilled labour could be provided if labour in the existing yards in the district were more 'efficiently used. This suggestion has, with the help of those who made it, been examined on the spot. It should be made clear that our need of shipbuilding labour is so great that even if any of the men employed in the Tyne shipyards are shown by this examination to be available for transfer elsewhere, they cannot at present be spared to man a new yard on either the Jarrow or the Northumberland site.

Mr. Adams: Is my right hon. Friend, aware that there are considerable numbers of skilled men on Tyneside unemployed? There is an abundance of labour.

Mr. Hall: We have no knowledge of any skilled men unemployed at Jarrow or in any other shipbuilding district. We are endeavouring to get piece-work rates introduced wherever possible.

Mr. Gallacher: May we take it that the Minister's statement about Jarrow is correct, in view of the repudiation of his strictures about the Clyde?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Arthur Greenwood: May I ask the Leader of the House whether, in view of the fact that the Prime Minister's statement will be non-debatable, an opportunity will be provided before the Recess for a discussion?

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Eden): Certainly we will have that in mind as we go along, but I certainly cannot give a definite pledge now. I cannot tell, nor can the right hon. Gentleman tell, what the conditions are going to be. I must allow myself a certain latitude. I can tell the House that naturally our desire will be to meet the House by any means in our power but I cannot give a definite pledge. It would be wise perhaps to let the Prime Minister make his statement and see how the position stands.

Mr. Bevan: In view of the fact that requests have been made in the last three or four weeks for a Debate on the war situation, why is it impossible for the right hon. Gentleman to give us a firm assurance that in the next series of Sittings we shall have a Debate, and, if he cannot give that firm assurance, will the Prime Minister make his statement to-day on a Motion for the Adjournment, so that we may have an opportunity to consider what he says?

Mr. Eden: While it is true that there have been some requests for a Debate, there have also been a great many opinions reaching me in an opposite sense. The House might wish to see how matters develop before deciding when and in what circumstances a Debate can be most usefully held.

Mr. Bevan: Is there to be no protection whatever for minority views in the House? Is everyone in the world entitled to debate the war except the House of Commons?

Mr. Eden: I do not think the hon. Member can seriously believe that to be the Government's attitude. I shall do everything in my power to ensure opportunities for Debate, but, in a situation developing as this is now, it is impossible to fix a date.

Mr. Stokes: I was given to understand that very likely the first Sitting Day in the next series could be allotted for a Debate. May I ask whether, assuming that the military situation is all right, the Leader of the House can give a definite undertaking that there will be a Debate on the war that day?

Mr. Eden: The hon. Gentleman must understand that not only the military but the political situation is changing from hour to hour, and it is quite impossible for me to give a definite undertaking for the first Sitting Day in the next series.

Mr. Ivor Thomas: I do not wish to embarrass the right hon. Gentleman, but he must make up his mind by the third Sitting Day. Will there be such a change in the situation that he cannot give an answer now?

Mr. Eden: I beg my hon. Friend to believe that I am not at all embarrassed. What I do think is necessary is that we should give ourselves the maximum latitude that we can. I cannot foretell any more than can the hon. Member what the position will be in 24 hours from now.

Mr. Shinwell: Is there not some misunderstanding? Does not my right hon. Friend appreciate that it is not so much the military situation that hon. Members wish to discuss, because we do not know what the situation may be in the next series of Sittings, as he properly says, but certain decisions have already been taken by the Government, one of which was referred to by the Secretary of State for War to-day, which bears on the political situation in Sicily and possibly Italy. It is on these matters that the House, I am sure, desires to have a Debate. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I do not want to press my right hon. Friend to give an emphatic declaration—

Sir W. Davison: That is what the hon. Member is asking for.

Mr. Shinwell: I do not require any assistance from the hon. Gentleman. May I beg my right hon. Friend to take into consideration most sympathetically the request that has been made?

Mr. Eden: Of course, I shall take it into consideration sympathetically, but I cannot really add to what I have said. Political and military affairs cannot be estimated in this way. The situation has to be reviewed from hour to hour, and I think that when the House has heard the Prime Minister it may wish to change its mind.

ITALY AND THE WAR

The Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill): The House will have heard with satisfaction of the downfall of one of the principal criminals of this desolating war. The end of Mussolini's long and severe reign over the Italian people undoubtedly marks the close of an epoch in the life of Italy. The keystone of the Fascist arch has crumbled, and, without attempting to prophesy, it does not seem unlikely that the entire Fascist edifice will fall to the ground in ruins, if it has not already so fallen. The totalitarian system of a single party, armed with secret police, engrossing to itself practically all the offices, even the humblest, under the Government, with magistrates and courts under the control of the executive, with its whole network of domestic spies and neighbourly informants—that system when applied over a long period of time, leaves the broad masses without any influence upon their country's destinies and without any independent figures apart from the official classes. That, I think, is a defence for the people of Italy—one defence—although there can be no real valid defence for any country or any people which allows its freedom and inherent rights to pass out of its own hands.
The external shock of war has broken the spell which in Italy held all these masses for so long, in fact for more than 20 years, and held them all over all this period in physical and even more in moral subjection. We may, therefore, reasonably expect that very great changes will take place in Italy. What their form will be or how they will impinge upon the forces of German occupation and control it is too early to forecast. The guilt and folly of Mussolini have cost the Italian people dear. It looked so safe and easy in May, 1940, to stab falling France in the back and advance to appropriate the Mediterranean interests and possessions of what Mussolini no doubt sincerely believed was a decadent and ruined Britain. It looked so safe and easy to fall upon the much smaller State of Greece. However, there have been undeceptions. Events have taken a different course. By many hazardous turns of fortune and by the long marches of destiny the British and United States Armies, having occupied the Italian African Empire, the North of Africa, and the bulk of Sicily, now stand at the por-

tals of the Italian mainland armed with the powers of the sea and the air and with a very large land and amphibious force equipped with every modern weapon and device.
What is it that these masterful forces bring to Italy? They bring, if the Italian people so decide, relief from the war, freedom from servitude and, after an interval, a respectable place in the new and rescued Europe. When I learn of the scenes enacted in the streets of the fine City of Palermo on the entry of the United States Armies and review a mass of detailed information with which I have been furnished, I cannot doubt that the main wish of the Italian people is to be quit of their German taskmasters, to be spared a further and perfectly futile ordeal of destruction and to revive their former democratic and parliamentary institutions. These they can have. The choice is in their hands. As an alternative, the Germans naturally desire that Italy shall become a battle ground, a preliminary battle ground, and that by Italian sufferings the ravages of war shall be kept as far away as possible for as long as possible from the German Fatherland. If the Italian Government and people choose that the Germans are to have their way, no choice is left open to us. We shall continue to make war upon Italy from every quarter—North and South, from the sea and from the air, and by amphibious descents we shall also endeavour to bring the utmost rigour of war increasingly upon them. Orders to this effect have been given to all the Allied commanders concerned.
A decision by the Italian Government and people to continue under the German yoke will not affect seriously the general course of the war. Still less will it alter its ultimate result. The only consequence will be that in the next few months Italy will be seared and scarred and blackened from one end to the other. I know little or nothing of the new Government. I express no opinion, but it is obvious that so far as their own people are concerned, they have a very important decision to take. Meanwhile I am anxious that the various processes by which this decision is reached shall be allowed to run their course under no other pressure than that of relentless war. This operation may well take some time. There may be several changes of transition. Past experience shows that in cases of a great change of


heart and character in the government of a nation, very often one stage is rapidly succeeded by another. I cannot tell. So far, we have had no approaches from the Italian Government, and therefore no new decision is called upon from us, except those decisions connected with the bringing of the maximum avalanche of fire and steel upon all targets of military significance throughout the length and breadth of Italy.
However, I must utter a word of caution. We do not know what is going to happen in Italy, and now that Mussolini has gone, and once the Fascist power is certainly and irretrievably broken, we should be foolish to deprive ourselves of any means of coming to general conclusions with the Italian nation. It would be a grave mistake when Italian affairs are in this flexible, fluid, formative condition, for the rescuing Powers, Britain and the United States, so to act as to break down the whole structure and expression of the Italian State. We certainly do not seek to reduce Italian life to a condition of chaos and anarchy and to find ourselves without any authorities with whom to deal. By so doing, we should lay upon our Armies and upon our war effort the burden of occupying, mile by mile, the entire country and of forcing the individual surrender of every armed or coherent force in every district into which our troops may enter. An immense task of garrisoning, policing and administering will be thrown upon us, involving a grievous expenditure of power, and still more of time.
We must be careful not to get ourselves into the kind of position into which the Germans have blundered in so many countries, namely, of having to hold down and administer in detail, from day to day, by a system of gauleiters, the entire life of very large populations, thereby becoming responsible under the hard conditions of this present period for the whole of their upkeep and well-being. Such a course might well, in practice, turn the sense of liberation which it may soon be in our power to bestow upon the Italian people, into a sullen discontent against us and all our works. The rescuers might soon, indeed, be regarded as tyrants; they might even be hated by the Italian people as much or almost as much as their German allies. I certainly do not wish, in the

case of Italy, to tread a path which might lead to execution squads and concentration camps, and, above all, to having to carry on our shoulders a lot of people who ought to be made to carry themselves.
Therefore, my advice to the House of Commons, and to the British nation, and to the Commonwealth and Empire, and to our Allies at this juncture may be very simply stated. We should let the Italians, to use a homely phrase, stew in their own juice for a bit and hot up the fire to the utmost in order to accelerate the process, until we obtain from their Government, or whoever possesses the necessary authority, all the indispensable requirements we demand for carrying on the war against our prime and capital foe, which is not Italy but Germany. It is the interest of Italy and also the interest of the Allies, that the unconditional surrender of Italy should be brought about wholesale and not piecemeal. Whether this can be accomplished or not, I cannot tell, but people in this country and elsewhere who cannot have the necessary knowledge of all the forces at work or assign true valuations to the various facts and factors, should, I think, at this juncture be restrained in speech and writing, in case they may add to the tasks, the toils and the losses of our Armies and prolong and darken the miseries which have descended upon the world.
In all these affairs, we are, of course, acting in the closest concert with the United States, our equal partner and good and gallant comrade in this new tremendous Mediterranean enterprise. Our Russian friends are also being kept regularly informed. The Allied Commanders in the Mediterranean theatre are in the closest accord on the very difficult problems produced in such circumstances by the inseparable interplay of military and political elements; and the British and the United States armies under their leadership are working as if they were the Army of one single nation, an Army, I may remind the House, which has just shown itself capable of little less than a prodigy of intricate organisation. The two Governments are in continuous consultation and association through the Foreign Office, and I correspond personally almost every day, under the authority of the War Cabinet, with the President of the United States. I conceive that His Majesty's Government have the right to ask for the solid and sustained confidence of Parlia-


ment. After years of extreme difficulty and danger, we are conducting increasingly successful war and policy, and we feel sure that the House would not wish us to be deprived of the fullest freedom to act in the name and interest of the nation as we think fit, at this particular and swiftly-moving juncture. It is extremely important that full latitude should continue to be accorded to the Government by the House, that no diminution of the responsibility of the Executive should be attempted, and that no untimely or premature explanation should be sought in respect of business of such consequence and complications.
Questions have been addressed to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about a Debate. It may be possible for me to make some further statement not only on the Mediterranean position but on the war as a whole before the House rises. I should be quite willing if this were possible, but I cannot at present promise to do so, because I do not know whether any point will be reached in the next week from which a general survey could usefully be made. Very complete, vivid and excellent accounts are appearing in the newspapers of all the operations. An immense army of correspondents move with the troops and carry their cameras into the heat of the fight, and an immense volume of material of the deepest interest and of a very high level of quality and accuracy fills the public Press from hour to hour, and there is at present very little which I could add to this, except, of course, to set matters in proportion as I and my colleagues view them, and to place the proper emphasis, or what we conceive, with our fallible judgment, to be the proper emphasis, upon the various facts and factors.
I will venture to offer another word of caution, and I do not think it is inappropriate to do so in a period when, not unnaturally, our spirits run high. What is Italy as a war unit? Italy is, or rather it was, perhaps about one-tenth of the power of Germany. The German tyranny is being violently assailed and beset on every side. Mighty battles on the Russian front, far exceeding in scale any of the operations in which we and the United States have hitherto been engaged on land, have in the month of July inflicted further deep injuries upon the German army. The systematic shattering of Ger-

man cities continues remorselessly and with ever-growing weight. The spirit of revolt rises higher in all the subjugated lands. The German rule is maintained from the North Cape in Norway to the Island of Crete only by hideous and ruthless cruelty, reprisals and massacres. The German hopes of the U-boat warfare turning the tide of war are sinking as fast as the U-boats themselves. The whole outlook of the Nazi party and régime, their whole ideological outlook, as it is called, will be disturbed and darkened by the events which have happened and are going to happen in Italy, and the overthrow and casting down in shame and ruin of the first of the dictators and aggressor war lords strikes a knell of impending doom in the ears of those that remain.
Nevertheless, let us not allow this favourable inclination of our fortunes to blind us to the immensity of the task before us, nor of the exertions still to be made and privations and tribulations still to he endured and overcome. The German national strength is still massive. The German armies, though seriously mauled by the three Russian campaigns, are still intact and quite unbroken. Hitler has under his orders over 300 German divisions, excluding the satellites. Three-quarters are mobile and most of them continue to be well equipped. We are fighting some of these divisions in Sicily at this moment, and, as we see, they offer a stubborn resistance in positions well adapted to defence. The authority of the central Government in Germany grips and pervades every form of German life. The resources of a dozen lands are in their hands for exploitation. The harvest prospects are reported to be fairly good. This Nazi war machine is the hateful incubus upon Europe which we are resolved utterly to destroy, and the affairs of Italy must be handled with this supreme object constantly in view. Both our strategy and our policy, I venture to claim, have been vindicated by events, and I look forward to offering to Parliament, as the months unfold, further convincing proof of this assertion, but we cannot afford to make any large mistake which we can by careful forethought avoid, nor can we afford to prolong by any avoidable mismanagement the sombre journey in which we shall persevere to the end.

AGRICULTURE (REGULATION 28B)

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper in the name of Sir JOSEPH LAMB

71. To ask the Minister of Agriculture in how many instances have difficulties arisen with county councils in connection with the transfer of functions and staff necessitating the making of Regulation 28B.

The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. R. S. Hudson): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to read an answer which I should have given to Question No. 71 on the Paper if it had been reached. I ask your leave to do so, because it has a bearing upon to-day's Business.

Following is the answer:

Some apprehension appears to have arisen regarding the possible scope of this Regulation. Representations have been made to me that the Regulation in its present terms is unnecessarily wide. To meet this, I propose as soon as possible to take the necessary steps to lay before the House a revised and more restricted Regulation, the terms of which will, I hope, be satisfactory both to the House and to the County Councils Association. I think it is only fair to state that on the whole county councils have been most helpful in lending me, and where necessary, in seconding to my Department, such members of their staff as I require. In only a small minority of counties have difficulties and friction arisen. I hope, therefore, that when the terms of the revised Regulation are published, all apprehension will be found to have been allayed.

Sir J. Lamb: It was somewhat difficult to hear with accuracy the statement just made, because of the noise going on. May I ask my right hon. Friend whether the new Regulation now promised will cover the services which have been specified in negotiations which have recently been held with him?

Mr. Hudson: Yes, Sir.

Sir J. Lamb: In that case may I thank the Minister for his answer, and say that in consequence of the undertaking which he has given now it is not the intention of myself or other Members who have put it on the Order Paper to move the

Prayer which would have come on later in the proceedings to-day.

[That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Order in Council, dated 20th May, 1943, made under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Acts, 1939 and 1940, adding Regulation 288 to the Defence (Agriculture and Fisheries) Regulations, 1939, a copy of which was presented to this House on 25th May, be annulled.]

Mr. Boothby: May I ask whether we shall be right in assuming that this Order applies only to England and Wales and not to Scotland?

Mr. Hudson: Yes.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Ordered,
That this day, notwithstanding anything in Standing Order No. 14, the Civil Excess Vote, 1941, and a Supplementary Estimate for a New Service may be considered; that Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before the hour appointed for the interruption of Business; and that if the first Resolution reported from the Committee of Supply of the 23rd July shall have been agreed to before the hour at which Mr. Speaker is directed, by paragraph 7 of Standing Order No. 14, to put forthwith certain Questions, Mr. Speaker shall proceed to put forthwith those Questions."—[Mr. Eden.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—[Mr. Eden.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[20TH ALLOTTED DAY]

REPORT [23RD JULY]

CIVIL ESTIMATES AND ESTIMATES FOR REVENUE DEPARTMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1943

Resolutions reported.

Orders of the Day — OVERSEAS TRADE DEPARTMENT

I "That a sum, not exceeding £2,668,876, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the charges for the following Departments connected with the Department of Overseas Trade and with Export Trade for the year ending on the 3rst day of March, 5944, namely:

Class VI., Department of Overseas Trade
£183,254


Class VI., Export Credits
£191,978


Class VI., Board of Trade
£1,293,644



£1,668,876"

[For details of remaining Resolutions, see OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd July, 1943; cols. 1333–1341, Vol. 391.]

First Resolution Read a Second time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."

Mr. Harcourt Johnstone (Secretary, Overseas Trade Department): As the three Votes put down to-day indicate, in order

to give a general picture of our export policy as it stands and to follow that up by some statement of what is being planned in the post-war period involves touching upon the work of the overseas side of the Board of Trade, for which, under my right hon. Friend, I am responsible, and then upon the work of the Department of Overseas Trade and of the Export Credits Guarantee Department, for whose Votes I am responsible to Parliament. Up to the outbreak of war, our export policy, though not always easy, was obvious. Our object was to sell abroad as much as possible in order to pay for the food and raw materials which we require from overseas, and, on the whole, we were successful in doing so and in earning a surplus as well, for investment in foreign countries or in the Dominions or Colonies. It is true that in the decade before the war we were not always successful in balancing our payments with the very large sum of our investments abroad, to enable us to meet such deficits as occurred without too much inconvenience and to look forward to a time when the deficits would turn once more into annual surpluses.
Then came the war, and the brief period during which our export policy was not fully determined. Very soon, however, at a time when my right hon. and gallant Friend the present Colonial Secretary was President of the Board of Trade, we entered into the period of the war known as the export drive. It was carried to its height under the guidance of my right hon. Friend the present Minister of Supply. Those were the days of "cash and carry," when our relations with neutral countries were not yet clearly defined and when nearly every form of foreign exchange which we could possibly earn was of value in the prosecution of the war. The export drive was remarkably effective. With the co-operation of manufacturers and merchants and of the newly formed export groups, exports were raised by the late spring of 1940 to a very remarkable figure indeed. It regrets me that those figures cannot be mentioned, because I think they would impress the Committee. It is an unfortunate fact that, for security reasons, figures of exports cannot be given publicity, which must tend to rob the discussion to-day of a certain amount of reality. The export drive may be said to have continued until the end of the


year 1940, but already, by the early autumn, this aspect was noticeably changing, and the era of the so-called selective exports had set in.
Although this change seemed somewhat to threaten our capacity for buying abroad, yet it was in itself a sign of good things at home. It meant that war production was increasing on a really big scale and that exports in future would have to be strictly regulated in order to preserve labour, raw materials and factory space for the essential purposes of war production. The export drive had done great things. It had demonstrated to the world the remarkable flexibility and tenacity of British manufacture, and it had earned for us many, many millions of essential foreign exchange. Henceforth, however, the policy of selectivity was to work with increasing rigour. Our ability to pursue this policy was immensely assisted by the adoption on the part of the United States of the generous policy of Lend-Lease. That was in the early months of 194.t. Then, finally, with the entry of the United States into the war, there began the new policy of joint planning, as we now call it, which is now being applied to the export trade of both countries to an increasing extent.
These changes of policy have, of course, inevitably caused some temporary maladjustments in our export industries, though, on the whole, the gradual changeover to a full war economy has gone with remarkable smoothness. I think it is universally recognised that the purpose of our export trade is not now primarily to balance our import needs but to contribute directly rather than indirectly to winning the war. The export trade is dependent upon factory space, manpower, machinery and shipping. All those factors have to be harnessed primarily to the war effort, and so it follows that the export trade is now in the nature of a supply service, attuned to our total war effort, rather than the export trade as it existed before the war and later, during the export drive. The nonmilitary supplies which we export now are playing their full part in the war effort of the British Empire as well as of the United Nations as a whole, for the maintenance of the internal economy of our Dominions and Colonies and the Colonial markets of our Allies. We must also remember the neutral States from whom

we obtained the supplies of food and raw materials which are almost as essential as the provision of munitions.
Let me give an illustration of what has happened by reference to a particular type of export. Before the war our pottery industry, beside supplying the home market with its essential requirements and with its luxury or semi-luxury ware, conducted a flourishing export trade. It was based almost entirely upon home-produced raw materials, and for that reason its export trade was of special value. Foreign currency against pottery exports did not have to be discounted, as others had to some extent, by an appreciable expenditure upon raw materials from: abroad. In the earlier stages of the war, therefore, during the period of the export drive especially, when currency was of such enormous importance to us, by arrangements made between the Ministry of Labour and the Department of Overseas Trade labour in the pottery industry was afforded special reservation in order that our exports, particularly to hard currency countries, might be increased and earn for us currencies of which we stood in really desperate need in the days of "cash and carry." The pottery industry, needless to say, responded really nobly to this task. Then, as time went on, and the need of man-power became more insistent, the pottery industry was called upon to undergo concentration like so many other industries. Supplies of pottery coming on to the home market were limited increasingly to essential needs, and the global export quota was reduced.
Meantime, the volume of essential domestic requirements was growing, owing to the increase in the Fighting Services, the auxiliary Services, and factory and national canteens and so on To render possible the increased output with the reduced man-power, the decoration of pottery for the home market was prohibited, and types of production were reduced and standardised. We even began to see cups without handles. So far as export is concerned, the volume has been reduced to a limited proportion of the exports in 1941, and arrangements have been made to ensure that many markets which were largely if not wholly dependent upon us in the past, will obtain their full share of exports which are still permitted.
In other words, the exigencies of war and the need to put first things first have compelled His Majesty's Government to regulate and restrict exports to an increasing extent. The primary object is, of course, to win the war, and the available resources of labour, factory capacity, raw materials and shipping must be devoted to that purpose. This has necessarily involved transfer on a major scale of resources of all kinds from their normal peace-time purpose. The volume of production of ordinary goods, whether for home use or for export, has had to be curtailed correspondingly. In the very important field of capital goods, such as machinery and plant, any exports not justified by war-time needs have had to be severely checked, and exports of repairing parts and for maintenance have had to be kept to the lowest level compatible with war-time needs and the maintenance of overseas economies upon a level appropriate to the circumstances of totalitarian war. In the field of ordinary consumer goods, rationing, direction and limitation of supplies have everywhere had to be introduced and to an increasing extent, if the war effort were not to suffer. It is indeed an essential accompaniment to the sort of war that we are fighting, that civil consumption of all kinds should have to be reduced everywhere to a minimum compatible with efficiency and the winning of the war, and that our exports of all kinds to all markets have had increasingly to comply with this condition.
Our main responsibility is towards the Empire and the countries actively associated with us in the war. They are largely dependent upon us for their supplies for their essential needs. Colonial territories of the world, under our flag or associated with us, are of great importance as primary producers of all kinds. If the labour and the production drives of those territories are to be maintained, consumer goods in appropriate amounts must be made available. Concentrated as they are on primary production, local resources in most cases are inadequate to the double task of maintaining an ample flow of primary products and of meeting their own consumer demands. Exports to the Dominions and Colonies are therefore essential to us, either directly or indirectly, in the field of war production, and exports to the Empire and the Colonial territories de-

pendent on us must take a first place in our export programme, even at the sacrifice, the inevitable sacrifice, of some of our traditional markets.
In this country there has had to be strict rationing and, as we all know, strict limitation of consumption. Our people have cheerfully, quite cheerfully, although perhaps with an occasional grumble, sacrificed their peace-time comforts and adapted themselves to a more Spartan standard. It would be a real betrayal of their sacrifice if export policy were allowed to be dominated by the normal commercial considerations appropriate to the happier times of peace, and it would jeopardise the speedy winning of the war if resources that could demonstrably be better employed for the war should be used for the production of goods for export that do not contribute to this end. A prime test in the export field to-day is whether goods are really essential to the importing countries, due regard, of course, being had to their own resources, to other sources of supply and to their appropriate level of war-time economy and war-time consumption. In short, the optimum use of the resources of the United Nations must be the dominant factor. Our main duty within the limits of the resources we can spare for the purpose is to supply only those goods that are essential and for which this country is the most appropriate source.
Under present circumstances the needs of the importing country are the prime factor to be considered. Our export trade has had to adapt itself to this condition. Where the customary kind of exports have been of a less essential sort or even in some cases reflected the happier days of peace when luxury was not a crime, our manufacturers and merchants have had to turn away from it and adapt themselves to the production of more essential and more utilitarian kinds of goods. The export trade has had to make a sacrifice of some of its higher quality products in adapting itself to the more austere conditions now prevailing. Many specialities appropriate to the days of peace have had to give way to more standardised and more economic production. Channels of trade too have been disturbed through the overriding consideration I have mentioned. Importing countries, of course, as the supplies grow shorter, are more and more concerned with the equitable distribution of the limited supplies available


within their own borders. They themselves have had to adopt various methods of control, ranging from import licences to bulk ordering.
Wherever possible, subject always to the overriding condition of efficiency, we have sought to keep trade in its normal channels, for these normal channels of peacetime trade are in fact often more efficient and adaptable than a system of full Governmental regulation. Indeed, I have been amazed at their resilience and the continued contribution they have made and are still making to the reasonable satisfaction of overseas demands. For our own part we have tried, in the various schemes regulating exports, to maintain the greatest possible measure of equity among all trades and sections of trades. The export groups and other representative bodies in the trade have been called into frequent consultation in deciding the mechanism of any scheme and the system of allocation to be followed. In the main we distribute out trade in proportion to past performances, and in this way we hope to keep alive all our export interests for the great task ahead of them of rebuilding our export trade after the war.
Let me give the House a description of how one of our most important export trades is now run. Before the war the value of our exports of woollen manufactures was about £30,000,000 to 35,000,000 a year. Woollen manufactures normally accounted therefore for about one-twelfth of our total exports. Woollen and worsted piece goods are the most important part of the trade. They were first brought under control in November, 1941, and the full scheme at present working was started in February, 1942. Owing to the existence when the scheme started of considerable export stocks built up during the period of the export drive, total exports in 1942 remained at a pretty high level, but with the disappearance of stocks and the reduction of total production due to labour withdrawals, the total available for export is now much reduced and is barely sufficient to meet essential Empire needs. It has thus been found necessary not to allow new production for Latin America or for the United States. This decision has provoked a strong protest from the trade, but I am afraid that no change is possible so long as the production position remains as it is.

Sir Patrick Hannon: Did consultations take place with the trade or the interests concerned in the woollen trade before this very important decision was arrived at?

Mr. Johnstone: Yes, the fullest consultation of all kinds. The position has been fully explained to the trade, and there has been a full exchange of letters between my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and the Chairman of the Wool Export Group. The Board of Trade decides the amount of the exports to be allocated to different countries in accordance with need. The main markets now for woollen goods are Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. Australia is relatively unimportant, and not much is required by the Colonies or by the Middle East. The export control scheme is run by a branch situated in Bradford of the Export Licensing Department. It is found very convenient for the trade, and licences are granted to exporters in proportion to their trade in the separate markets in the year ended in November, 1941. This base period and other arrangements were agreed with the trade. It has been found possible in general to maintain this principle, which has been accepted by the trade as equitable. In the case of some markets it has been found necessary to restrict the types of cloth that can be exported. For example, special arrangements have been made with the Canadian Government, in consultation and agreement with the trade, as to types of cloth required for Canada. The arrangements include certain price limits also agreed by the trade. Special arrangements, though more limited in their scope, have also been made with Australia. Otherwise, trade has been left to normal channels and arrangements within the quota.
In the case of the Middle East there has been some difficulty in marrying up our export allocation system with the import recommendations from the Middle East. It is hoped however that arrangements at present in course of discussion would prove satisfactory both in meeting the needs of the Middle East and the interests of our own merchants. The Wool Advisory Committee, containing representatives of all sections of the trade, was set up early in 1942 to advise us on the working of the scheme. This, I believe, has been much appreciated by


the trade, and it has certainly been very helpful to us The wool scheme indeed has run smoothly, and there has been no complaint of substance as to the mechanism of this scheme. Recent complaints such as there have been have related not to the mechanism of control nor to the need for restriction which is fully accepted, but to our inability to allow any further new production for the present for exports to Latin America and the United States.
Exports of wool yarn are also under control. The Board, in consultation with the Wool Control, settled the total to be exported. We decide the distribution between countries, but the distribution of the export quota among exporters is done by the Wool Control. Exports of knitted woollen goods have been under strict control for a long time owing to the shortage on the home market. Apart from some Colonial requirements, very little export of knitted goods is permitted. An exception, however, is made in the case of the rarer fibres like cashmere and alpaca and so on, which are not in such demand for the home market and where a small pocket of production still exists.
I have given examples of how our present war export policy is being applied to two of our most interesting export trades, pottery and wool, which are two examples of a British characteristic on which we shall have to count much in the future. I mean superiority of quality. In both cases quality has had largely to be sacrificed, and it is possible that quality may have to some extent to be sacrificed during the period immediately after the war, when the relief of devastated Europe and Asia will be of such immediate importance. But we must return as soon as possible to the manufacture of high quality goods if we are to regain and expand our export trade. The nation, I fully believe, accepts the thesis that for a period after the war many of the present war controls will have to be maintained if the world is to return to peace conditions in an orderly manner, but just as the present joint arrangements for civil supplies contain no implication whatever that we shall not be free when peace is fully restored to trade with any market in the world, so equally, when that time comes, shall we return to the manufacture for export of goods of the highest possible quality. It

is not likely, however, that we shall too quickly reach a stage after the war where the normal interplay of economic forces can be left free.
In the transition period through which we have to pass from the present highly abnormal conditions to the normal conditions we hope to establish there will be a difficult intervening period when control of various kinds must be maintained. A new task will face us immediately our Armies have liberated countries now under the enemy yoke. The relief of the distressed countries must be and is being kept in mind. It is inevitable that if we want to have the equitable distribution of the means of living, both in consumer goods and in reconstruction generally, the demands will outrun materially the available supply in the post-war period. We shall have to share what we have with our less fortunate neighbours on the Continent of Europe. Some measure of restriction of our home consumption and some measure of direction of our exports will continue, therefore, to be necessary in the early days of peace. This must remain the guiding principle in the policy of the Government.
We are fully aware that this has meant, still means, and may continue to mean sacrifices and temporary loss or markets by many branches of our export trade. It has been repeatedly emphasised that the Government regard an increasing and healthy export trade after the war as an essential if we are to maintain our own standards of living and to play our part in contributing to the achievement of an expanding world economy, with full employment, which is one of the main objectives of the Atlantic Charter and the Mutual Aid Agreement. The Government fully realise their responsibilities in this field and already are giving much time and attention to discovering the best means of attaining all the objectives of the Atlantic Charter by agreed action-for it can be achieved only by agreed action with other like-minded nations. But it will depend inevitably on the enterprise of our trade and industry, the skill of our workpeople, the willingness of all to work for the better things that we all, without exception, desire to achieve. The Government have every confidence in the resilience of industry and in its ability to develop export trade once again when the time comes.

Mr. Shinwell: My right hon. Friend spoke about agreed action with other nations, but he did not explain what was meant. What does he mean by agreed action?

Mr. Johnstone: I will give my hon. Friend an example. We have lately seen the Keynes and White Plans, as they are known, which are being discussed by the Governments of all the United Nations. It is clearly highly desirable that an agreed scheme Should be reached. That is an example of the sort of agreed action which I have in mind.

Mr. Gallacher: Are you going back to the old smash-and-grab which operated before the war?

Mr. Johnstone: That is not the intention of the two schemes I have mentioned; indeed, their intention is precisely the opposite of that. For the time being, however, industries must be asked to accept the present situation and the loss, or the drastic curtailment, of traditional branches of trade and traditional markets, in the knowledge that, vital as export trade will be to this country in the postwar world, it is even more vital to concentrate now on winning the war.
I should like to turn to the work of the Export Credits Guarantee Department. This Department came into being some years after the last war, in order to assist the exporters of United Kingdom goods by giving them cover in suitable cases, at an appropriate premium, against the risk of non-payment by the overseas purchaser of their goods. Great care was taken to make the exporter a participator with the Department in the risk involved. The Department made it a point of policy not to insure the whole cost of the goods, since if the exporter ran no risk of loss he might fail to take reasonable precautions to ensure that the purchaser was of reasonable credit. Another risk against which the exporters became increasingly interested in covering themselves in the inter-war period was the risk of having to wait a long time for the transfer of exchange even though the purchaser had made payment at due date in the local currency for the goods exported. In the early days of the war new risks arose—risks arising from enemy action, over which the exporter could exercise no possible control, risks of so serious a character that they might well prevent the

exporter from engaging in trade at all. The most important of these risks against which the Department agreed to give cover was what was called calamity risks, the risk of non-payment by the purchaser owing to occupation of his country by the enemy before he was able to make payment. This risk occurred more especially in the early days of the war, when export trade was still of importance from the point of view of earning foreign currency and when Germany had overrun certain countries and still had it in her power to subject others to the same fate. That day, fortunately, has passed, never, we hope, to return. Another risk against which the Department arranged cover was frustration of voyage risk, which took the form of additional transport or insurance charge to the exporter against the risk of diversion to another port of the ship carrying his goods.
The possibility of securing cover at reasonable rates against very serious risks was welcomed by exporters, as has been proved by the considerable volume of insurance effected by the Department. The demand for these guarantees increased rapidly, and during the three years ending 31st March, 1943, the aggregate value of the policies issued by the Department exceeded £267,000,000. It was not expected when this system was started that these war-time guarantees would be on a commercial basis, but the cost has so far been less than was anticipated. The war emergency scheme, covering all guarantees given since the outbreak of war, has resulted to date in a deficit of rather more than £1,000,000, but this will eventually be substantially reduced by recoveries. The ultimate deficit on these schemes—and there may be none—will represent but a tiny proportion of the total exports which have been facilitated by these schemes. That the Department must play an important part in the post-war period I have no doubt at all, since, especially in Europe, during the period of reconstruction unusual difficulties will occur. Institutions and firms that were credit-worthy in all respects before the war may have undergone such changes in capital and in structure—and, indeed, may have gone completely bankrupt—that the risk involved in trading with them may be very considerable.
The Department possesses an Advisory Council consisting of business men, to


whom we are deeply indebted for the time and trouble so generously devoted to assisting the Department. I have asked the Council to make recommendations for assisting the post-war usefulness of the Department, and their recommendations have been made and are now being carefully considered. I feel sure that after the war it may well be desirable that Parliament should be asked to increase the statutory limits upon the potential volume of liability at any one time accepted by the Department.

Sir P. Hannon: Will my right hon. Friend have a list of these liabilities made and presented to Parliament, so that it may be available to Members of this House?

Mr. Johnstone: If, for example, the Government were to approve some extension of the total liability to be undertaken by the Department at any one time, I think that that alteration would have to be incorporated in a Bill introduced in this House.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman cannot continue on that subject, because it is not in Order to discuss legislation on Supply.

Mr. Molson: What is the existing maximum to the Department's liabilities?

Sir Percy Harris: Can we have a White Paper?

Mr. Johnstone: The Council's advice has been tendered to me through the Committee over which my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister without Portfolio presides, and the details of the alterations which are recommended by the Council are now being considered by the appropriate Departments. I really do not think that an exception should be made for this particular series of recommendations, since the whole of the recommendations made to the Minister without Portfolio are in fact kept confidential, for the moment at any rate.

Mr. Wootton-Davies: Are we to understand that the Minister without Portfolio is to deal with overseas trade?

Mr. Johnstone: No, Sir. That is not exactly what I said. Overseas trade, like

every other form of human activity, has some connection with the Government; and where it has some connection with the Government it is not only with one Department, but, of course, with a number of Departments. In that respect it is no exception to other Governmental activities. My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister without Portfolio is responsible for co-ordinating the views of Government Departments and presenting the Government's views on a number of subjects.

Mr. Wootton-Davies: Including overseas trade?

Mr. Johnstone: Including overseas trade, or anything you like; but only from an inter-departmental point of view. These particular recommendations about which I have been speaking have been through my right hon. and learned Friend's Committee, and have now got to the final departmental stage.

Mr. Shinwell: Which other Department has had to be consulted?

Mr. Johnstone: Mainly the Treasury; they have to find the money.

Sir Granville Gibson: My right hon. Friend referred to £267,000,000 up to March this year in respect of insurance covered by the Export Credits Department. He knows, of course, that the U.K.C.C. are operating over the whole of the Middle East. Is it necessary for them to take advantage of cover by the Department?

Mr. Johnstone: They run their own scheme.

Sir P. Hannon: Is it a fact that the U.K.C.C. have a scheme financed entirely by their own administration, while at the same time the Department have their own guarantee system?

Mr. Johnstone: I am not financially responsible for the U.K.C.C., but they find the cover for what they call their customers.

Sir P. Hannon: But you keep in contact with them?

Mr. Johnstone: Yes.

Mr. Shinwell: Is their normal expenditure provided by the Government? We


were informed that even lunches that they provide for potential customers are paid for out of Government funds.

Mr. Johnstone: Oh yes, certainly.

Mr. Kirkwood: Before they get any grant or consideration, have they to go through a means test the same as the working classes, or is it that thousands of pounds are given to them automatically?

Mr. Johnstone: The test applied is that it is supposed to be a good thing for the country that the Government should provide the necessary money for any particular operation the U.K.C.C. undertakes which is an ordinary operation of policy.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Are we likely at any stage to-day to have any general statement by the right hon. Gentleman or by his right hon. Friend as to the ramifications and the various operations of the U.K.C.C., so that we can have the searchlight put on the whole thing, which appears to be very necessary?

Mr. Johnstone: My right hon. Friend says he is prepared to say something about the U.K.C.C. when he replies on the Debate, but my hon. Friend must bear in mind that the responsibility for the U.K.C.C. is not that of my right hon. Friend. The U.K.C.C. does work at his request.

Mr. Walkden: Of the Government.

Mr. Johnstone: Yes, of the Government, but not the Board of Trade.

Mr. Molson: In view of the part that the Minister without Portfo is playing in co-ordinating the activities or the Board of Trade and the Treasury and any other Department which may be concerned with export trade, there seems to be so much co-ordination that it would be useful if we were told what he is doing to co-ordinate the Board of Trade officials.

Mr. Johnstone: That is not a difficult question to answer. I come to that later on in what I am going to say.

Mr. Molson: I beg my right hon. Friend's pardon.

Mr. Johnstone: A report of that kind is submitted to a Committee which con-

tains a number of Cabinet members, and there is a discussion on the apportionment of work between all kinds of Departments. I now come to another Department for which I am responsible to Parliament—the Department of Overseas Trade. This Department was established about the end of the last war for the purpose of furthering the export of United Kingdom goods. The Department maintains in foreign countries, as members of the British Mission, commercial diplomatic officers who, in addition to making their own inquiries, call upon British Consuls, who for commercial purposes are subordinate to them in that respect, to provide them with commercial information relating to their Consular areas. Within the Empire our Trade Commissioners, who hold independent appointments, work in close touch with the United Kingdom High Commissioner in the Dominion in which such an officer has been appointed. It is the duty of these officers, apart from advising the heads of Missions or High Commissioners as the case may be, to assist United Kingdom business men who are visiting their area, to keep headquarters informed in a general way of commercial developments, Government contracts and other trade openings, and to furnish ad hocinformation in response to any specific inquiries made from them. It is the duty of the Department at headquarters to keep in touch with industry, to furnish export industries with information of every kind in regard to foreign markets, to assist in finding suitable agents overseas for exports from this country, and generally to assist export trade to the best of its ability. Another of its activities before the war but suspended during the war was that of staging the London section of the British Industries Fair and taking responsibility for participation on behalf of the Government in Imperial or international fairs or exhibitions.
During the war the work of this Department has been considerably reduced. It still receives reports and makes a number of inquiries from its officers overseas, though a number of these officers are devoting a greater or smaller proportion of their time to war-time duties at their posts abroad. At the time of the export drive, the Department worked at very great pressure, and the staff, of which a large number were loaned to other Government Departments at the outbreak of war, had


temporarily to be increased. But, even so, it fell below its pre-war complement. With the diminution of export trade, the complement of the Department has been progressively reduced, until at the present time its authorised complement stands at rather less than one-quarter of its pre-war figure. (An HON. MEMBER: "What was that?") About 101. The Department still receives a large volume of inquiries from business exporters and from its officers overseas at a rate of some 2,000 every month. It is the Department's duty to assist exporters with advice on the very many complexities with which they are faced under war conditions. Other of their current activities are to advise the appropriate Departments in regard to the issue of exit permits for business men desirous of travelling abroad, the granting of foreign currency in connection with such visits and the activities of branch houses or representatives overseas of British firms.
At the present time the main activity of part of the staff is to consider postwar problems. While it might not have been a certainty that this war would break out, it is an absolute certainty that it will finish, and though we do not know how, immediately after the end of the war, export trade will be resumed under more normal conditions, when that day comes our exporters, many of whom have lost contact with their former markets, will be anxious to have and should be in a position to obtain, reports upon wartime changes in markets overseas. Arrangements are now in train for the production of reports of two kinds, (1) geographical, upon individual markets, and (2) industrial, to indicate the particular export industries and the conditions they are likely to find in all the more important markets. The preliminary reports from overseas officers upon which our final judgment must be founded have been received from every post. These will be continuously revised, both abroad and at home, so that the final product may be as up-to-date as possible. Naturally, it will not be possible to provide fully informative reports upon occupied countries, which information of a surprising amount is in fact available, and it should be possible within a short time after the armistice to bring this information abroad well up-to-date. The intention is that these reports should be available for issue

to chambers of commerce, trading organisations, export groups, and individual export firms. When export trade as we knew it before can be resumed, I hope that this will prove to be of assistance to our manufacturers and merchants and make some contribution towards the re-absorption of labour into our industries when they turn over from war to peace.
I have appointed a committee within the Department to consider the various forms of service and assistance which the Department rendered before the war to our exporters, and it is my intention when that committee has made its recommendations to confer with representative business men in order to ascertain whether the activities recommended for the post-war period are those which would really help them and in what way improved service could be rendered by the Department. It may be found—I do not say that it is certain to be found—that there are certain services that have to some extent outlived their usefulness and that others could with advantage take their places. I intend to discover, not only from what I call high-up business men, but from export manufacturers and others who are engaged in the day-to-day work of export just what use our services are to them. It is no good keeping some elaborate service going which may look very nice but is in fact nothing but a piece of eyewash.

Mr. Hammersley: I understand my right hon. Friend to say that he is going to ask his Department to make recommendations and is subsequently to confer with business men. I wonder whether it would not be better to confer with business men a little earlier before recommendations are put forward.

Mr. Johnstone: I think not. It is not an elaborate inquiry with recommendations, and we have in the Department a great volume of experience available of how business men have reacted to these various services and how they are regarded by our officers abroad and so on. I propose to get a summary of the views inside the Department on these services, as corrected by anything which is available from foreign or Imperial posts, and then to submit them to the eye of experienced business men. They will, in no sense, be finalised before that process is gone through. There will simply be a


summary of what has gone on and what the Department thinks of the information available to-day. During the past year I presided over a committee, the meetings of which representatives of a large number of Departments as well as my own, and all the business members of the Industrial and Export Council regularly attend. This committee was set up by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply shortly before he left the Board of Trade to take his present position. The subject of the Committee's deliberation has been the promotion of export trade after the war. The Committee recently made its first report to the President of the Board of Trade, and the report has been referred to the Minister without Portfolio.

Mr. Shinwell: What has. it suggested?

Mr. Johnstone: That is not for publication. It has nothing to do with me.

Mr. Shinwell: I am sorry. I thought we were discussing the possibility of developing our export trade after the war. Unless we are advised of the Government's policy arising from recommendations that are made by one Department to another Department, how are we to determine whether the Government have a policy for reviving our export trade?

Mr. Johnstone: It is not my responsibility nor even the responsibility of my right hon. Friend here. It is the general responsibility of the Government, and I understand that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister without Portfolio will no doubt answer, if he is asked, why the departmental report to his Committee is in fact not for publication. If my hon. Friend puts that question at some other date, I have no doubt he will get a full reply. I am not responsible for it either one way or the other.

Mr. Shinwell: I have been listening very carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman has had to say in order to gather what was in his and his Department's mind as to the possibility of developing our export trade and whether we had a policy. At long last I have gathered that reports have been received from overseas markets summarising the possibility of services to exporters and that there has been set up a Committee which has made recommendations to the Minister without Portfolio. As I am anxious to catch Mr.

Speaker's eye later in order to offer a few observations on the subject, I wondered whether there was anything else.

Mr. Johnstone: I have not finished yet.

Sir G. Gibson: Does the Industrial and Export Council meet regularly? My information is that it has not met for years.

Mr. Johnstone: I was talking about a committee of business members of the Industrial and Export Council, not the Council itself. There are still a number of questions which have to be considered by that committee, although preliminary reports have gone to the Minister without Portfolio. For instance, tourism is being exhaustively considered by the Travel and Industrial Association, the grant-in-aid for which is borne on the Vote for my Department, although I am not responsible for its administration. A report will be rendered in due course by the Export Trade Committee. As hon. Members may be aware, the Ministry of Labour is also taking a great interest in this question of tourism and is hoping to take a big part in improving hotel accommodation in this country.

Mr. Molson: Is the Minister without Portfolio co-crdinating that also?

Mr. Johnstone: He will, in due course.

Mr. Shinwell: Did the right hon. Gentleman say "Toryism"?

Mr. Johnstone: No, but it is the same kind of thing.
The question of refugee industries is also under consideration. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but refugee industries have played, are playing and, I hope, will play a very important part in our economy. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has taken a great interest in this question, and so have I. I have seen these refugee industries at work, and I know something of them, how they have been carried on and the very difficult time they have had during the war, when the whole structure of industry has been altered at a moment's notice. These industries, not yet on a very firm foundation, have suffered perhaps disproportionately, but I do not intend to go into this question to-day, although I think it is a very interesting question and one which should be very profitable to this country.
In the meantime two sub-committees of this Committee have been appointed to consider the whole question of participation in exhibitions and fairs abroad, a subject about which I have often met with very wide divergencies of opinion. Still another sub-committee has been asked to report on design in industry, on what steps can be taken to improve the design of goods which the United Kingdom makes for export. There can be little or no doubt that design, whether functional or aesthetic, or both, will play an important part in creating a market for goods of a very wide range. The Departments are also holding a series of discussions with representatives of our leading export industries, in order to obtain an understanding of their problems and to learn their views on post-war plans and prospects. Renewed discussions will obviously be necessary when decisions of international policy in the spheres of finance and commerce have been reached. We must face the fact quite squarely that unless the United Nations can reach an agreement upon the economic future for the liberated world that is in full accord with the principles of the Atlantic Charter and Article 7 of the Lend-Lease Agreement, our hopes of a free and expanding economy may be in vain. We may be driven back upon the desperate defence of the inter-war years. His Majesty's Government hope and believe that this will not happen, and it is in that hope that they are looking forward to the reconstruction after the war of our export trade.

Mr. Burgin: The House has listened to a humdrum report on an immensely important topic, and the Minister will not mind my saying that much of what he told us was rather self-evident and that a good deal of it was an understatement. For instance, to say that the Government are firmly of the opinion that a healthy export trade is essential is, of course, putting it very mildly indeed. Nor was I aware, as I listened to the Minister unfolding his account of the various Departments and their activities, that any of the real difficulties confronting the country were being tackled at all, and in a few minutes I want to make one or two observations on some of these matters. How typically British it is, and how typical a British characteristic of our democratic institutions,

that we should listen at one moment to a speech by the Prime Minister on one of the most momentous happenings in the war and that we should then, in the following hour, as if it were a matter of normal routine, discuss export trade after the war. That is one of the all-sided features of the British democratic institution that we know as our Parliament and which must be an amazement to onlookers but which is a very great comfort to ourselves.
I am an optimist as to the fortunes and chances of export trade after the war. I believe that we have almost unrivalled manufacturing possibilities in this country. We have immense opportunities; we have a trained personnel in almost every industry, craft and branch that is second to none in their expert handling of material and machines; we have very considerable raw material and possibilities of acquiring raw material by our own coal and all its products and by our agriculture, shipping, ports and railways. We have a climate that comes to our aid, a people trained in industry "as the sparks fly upward," the possibility of the provision of the raw material of which we are in need and an almost undiminished manufacturing capacity in terms of plant, machinery and up-to-date equipment. I believe that the heroes of the post-war period will be all those who, by their own industry, initiative, design, invention, skill, management, or hard work, contribute one additional unit to our export total, for it is by the export trade of this country that our whole standard of well-being will be determined.

Mr. Shinwell: Mr. Shinwellindicated dissent.

Mr. Burgin: The hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) is entitled to his own view, but my own credo, after a very extensive study of these economic topics both during the war and what is likely to happen afterwards, leads me to believe that our internal trade by itself cannot maintain this country at the standard of comfort or at the level of wage and enjoyment to which we are accustomed, and that it is precisely the element of the export trade, added to our own internal trade, which will determine That measure of comfort. I believe that to be incapable of serious challenge, but no doubt that point will be dealt with later in the Debate. That, again, is one of the


great advantages of a democratic Assembly.
We were gratified to hear from the Minister assurances that the Government were alive to the necessity of maintaining the organs of export trade possibilities. Many Members of the House will remember, as I do, the present Minister of Production speaking to us at the time of the first idea of the concentration of industry. It sounded all so simple to have five units, all making the same thing, concentrated into one or two nucleus firms, and the remainder, shot of their factory plant and labour, being surplus to requirements for that particular commodity. Some of us said, "What is to happen to the sales organisations of the industries that are telescoped?" and I remember the pleasure with which we obtained the assurance from the right hon. Gentleman who was then the President of the Board of Trade and who is now the Minister of Production, that a minimum sales organisation was to be maintained in being even of those firms that were concentrated into other firms. That gave some of us the idea that attention would be constantly paid by the Government to the importance of not tearing up by the roots the sources of supply for the export trade or the sales organisations for selling proprietary or other brands. But we did not find that. I ask the House to bear with me while we examine several instances in which the very well-being of the entire export trade is being grubbed up by the roots, riot merely being cut back, is being restricted and reduced because of the necessity for concentration on total war—a necessity winch we all admit—and is being threatened with complete destruction. I wish to ask the House to think of such matters as Lend-Lease, the actions of the Treasury, the Ministry of Labour and the Custodian of Enemy Property, passing very lightly in review each one, but endeavouring to show the effect of these different operations of State policy and State administration upon the possibilities of export trade.
No one, of course, questions the immense wisdom and advantage to this country of the whole Lend-Lease programme, but I hope the Government are giving some thought to the question of how long allocation to world markets under any such policy is to continue. Alarming things are happening in the steel

pen industry at the present moment. There has been allocated from Washington to that industry a quota less for the entire world, divisible among all its separate units, than has been the custom for one of the units themselves to make for their own customers in a normal period. I do not question the immense value to the country of Lend-Lease as a conception of Lend-Lease both ways during war and immediately following the war, but what amount of thought is being given to the division of markets? Our exporters and those who have accredited branches, customers and outlets in certain countries are under a decision imposed upon them by a committee sitting in Washington. I mention it merely because it is one of those factors which go to the root of what we are discussing, because it takes a portion of the total export trade and renders it, while that policy lasts, wholly beyond our capacity to fulfil or supply in any way.
I mentioned the Treasury. What I have in mind is an immense Republic like Brazil. It may be that the finances and the Government of Brazil have not always been wisely conducted, and that, in consequence, the City of London feels that Brazil is one of those countries to which facilities cannot be extended on the same level as others. But I would ask the Minister to consider whether a great market like Brazil, which is already in difficulty because it is a Latin-American country and pre-eminently under the American sphere of influence under the Lend-Lease idea, is really to be excluded from its proper share of our export trade because of financial differences between its Government and the City of London in a past year. I ask that that attitude, which is causing great concern in London to my knowledge, which is time after time used as an argument for the refusal of an export licence for machinery or goods manufactured in this country, may be reviewed and some explanation given to the trading community as to the position of the Government with regard to Brazil as a country to which we have been accustomed to look as a market for large quantities of our goods.

Mr. Johnstone: Do I understand that my right hon. Friend means that export licences are being refused for United Kingdom goods to go to Brazil on the ground


that Brazil has not in the past punctually fulfilled her obligations? Will he let me have specific cases?

Mr. Burgin: I shall be only too happy. That is precisely the impression I desired to leave on the Minister and the House, that the reason for looking askance at exports to Brazil is Brazil's financial record in a period when she was under another administration, at an entirely different part of our world history and long before she was an Ally of this country. Many of us hoped that, immediately Brazil joined the Allied Nations, all those errors and transgressions of the past might at least have been conveniently put on one side for the time being and that she might have enjoyed most-favoured-nation treatment for the first time.

Major Petherick: The right hon. Gentleman will nor maintain the thesis that a debt contracted by the Government of any country would necessarily be repudiated by a following Government?

Mr. Burgin: I am asking that a United Kingdom exporter should not have difficulties placed in the way of a sale that he is wishing voluntarily to make to a Brazil customer because of an alleged default by the customer's Government in the past.
There is another contributory factor to the reduction of British export trade. I would ask the Minister to take into account the action of the Department of the Custodian of Enemy Property and the Trading with the Enemy Department. What I have in mind is this. I am not quite sure that hon. Members are familiar with what is happening. Any trading company in which there is an enemy element will, broadly speaking, pass under the control of the Trading with the Enemy Department and the Custodian of Enemy Property. The duty of the Custodian is to preserve, and the word "preserve" provides a great break on commercial activity. You may have in a trading company an enemy shareholding element passing under the control of the Custodian, and a British accountant, or a British lawyer, or a British trader nominated as the Custodian's representative on the board of that company. It may have very substantial assets. They may be liquid assets. Those liquid assets are at once

treated as something which, in order to be preserved, should be invested in Government funds. They are, therefore, withdrawn from the company's trading activities and are frozen by being placed at the disposal of the State. So far no one minds. Then assume that the trading company either just makes both ends meet by its normal trading or shows a tendency to make a trading loss. Its invested capital is not taken into account, but the Custodian's present attitude, acting, I have no doubt, upon Government instructions, is that wherever a company tends to show a probability of not being able to make sufficient to carry on, its capital is not regarded, but it is to be put on a care and maintenance basis and its activities brought to an end. Many of these are companies with export links, export facilities and an export reputation, and I am pointing out that, by the operation of the present policy of the Treasury and the Board of Trade in its impact upon the Trading with the Enemy Department and the Custodian, export houses are being closed down because of the Custodian's rigid interpretation of his duty to conserve, meaning that he has no power to engage in the risks of commerce. That difficulty is heightened by the fact that every loose penny of working capital is, under present directions, invested and is put beyond the availability of the company as working capital. I am calling attention to some practical day-to-day matters with which those of us who are connected with trade and industry find ourselves frequently confronted.
Another agency of that kind to which I wish to call attention in passing is the action of the Minister of Labour and National Service in regard to the personnel of firms engaged in the export trade. If it was right at the start of the concentration of industry to say that those firms that were telescoped should be allowed to maintain a minimum of a sales personnel, so, surely, export firms ought to be allowed to keep at their disposal in connection with export markets those men and women in whom are wrapped up the secrets of the export trade in the particular commodity in which they deal. There is an undoubted feature about the export trade. Some people have a flair for it and others have not. Some manage to know exactly how the customer overseas can be contented, and some fail by


yards to get near giving contentment. Every practical industrial unit knows that it has certain key people upon whom the possibilities of an export order being well carried out wholly depends. This type of consideration is apparently not present to the mind of the Minister of Labour and his staff. Industry after industry is finding subtracted from its personnel those key people who alone have an expert knowledge of oversea markets. If the man-power position was so desperate, if the need of the Forces was so desperate that every able-bodied person, whatever his special knowledge, ought to go straight into the Forces, no one would raise the matter, but it is because notoriously the position is very different and a large number of people are allowed to extend their activities in all kinds of ways that I beg the Minister, as one who has shown by his speech to-day that he is a believer in and is desirous of supporting export trade, to watch the agencies to which I have called attention, which sap the very roots of the trade which he is so desirous of supporting. I am calling attention to the matter in the interest which he has at heart in making the speech that he has done.
There is only one other thing which I wish to mention, and that is to rebuke a heresy. In many quarters to-day it is taken for granted that the word "luxury" is something to avoid—that it is something wrong in itself. I want simply to state in an assembly of well-informed men and women that a luxury export trade is none the less a good trade to this country because the articles in which it deals are in some people's opinion luxuries. It is very necessary to say so, because there is a great campaign against the resuscitation of any trade which is called a luxury trade. Human beings are made like that. Some like it penny plain, others like it twopence coloured. There will always be an ordinary model and a de luxe model. There will always be some people whose fancy, upbringing, preference or choice goes to pay incredibly more for an article which is no better because they happen to like it more. Why, in Heaven's name, should not some of our people be employed in making those things if there is a world market for them? A 17th century poet said exactly what I want to say in much better language than I could:

Hard was their lodging,
Lonely was their food,
For all their luxury
Was doing good
That expresses exactly what I want to say, and I beg the Minister, who has cultural qualities which we all admire, to cast a fatherly eye on the resuscitation of the luxury export trade, as well as all other branches.

Colonel Harold Mitchell: We have all listened with interest to the detailed survey which the Secretary to the Department of Overseas Trade has given us. I think everyone in the country accepts the principle that, in time of war, export trade has to be very severely curtailed, but I, for one, had hoped that we might hear rather more specific proposals as to the intentions of his Department in regard to the very difficult and vital post-war period. He told us that a number of very important committees are sitting, and no doubt they are doing excellent work, but we shall need a great deal more than tourist trade or refugee industries to get trade back after the war. I do not of course wish to speak in any disparaging terms of those industries, which may play their part among others.
I intervene in this Debate because I want to put a number of questions to the Secretary to the Department, not in any way to embarrass him but because people in industry want to be reassured that plans are ready the moment the war comes to an end to go right ahead with trying, once more, to re-establish export trade on a proper world basis. Obviously, the conditions at that time will be greatly changed. The world is going through a period of revolutionary change, and industry and commerce have to adapt them-selves to meet the condition of peace whenever it may come. The war has been going on for four years and we are entitled to expect that plans are being made ready. At all costs we must not take a short-sighted view. In the days before the war, the task of achieving a balanced Budget and of paying for our imports of food and raw materials was assisted very greatly by the revenue from our foreign investments. To-day that assistance has almost wholly gone and we have now to face a very different situation. It has been estimated that the loss in revenue from our foreign investments by the end


of the war will amount to something like £150,000,000 a year. These are big figures, and if we add the deficit on our international trade of about £50,000,000 immediately before the war, it means that we have to find something like £200,000,000 per annum in additional export trade if we are to make up the deficit.
The first question I would put to my right hon. Friend is whether the Overseas Trade Department has any idea how that amount of trade is to be recovered and from where? My right hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Burgin), who made an interesting and forceful speech, referred to one or two possible markets such as South America. Wherever they may be, markets have to be considered. The task will be a hard one. It may well be that export trade after the war will not be very popular with a public which has been severely rationed for a period of years. People may not look kindly on the idea of sending abroad many things, which they would be glad to see in the shops. But there is no alternative, as has already been said by my right hon. Friend. A time will come when war-time arrangements like Lease-Lend, however valuable they are, will come to an end, and we must be prepared for that period. The difficulties of some of the firms in the export trade have been touched on but there are other problems than those of concentration. Many firms have lost their premises in the blitz. Some of these are very important in the export market. Are any plans being made by the Overseas Trade Department to see that these firms get some measure of priority as regards alternative accommodation, so that they may have, in, say, shadow factories, or in other premises which are under the control of the Government, some opportunity of getting going quickly and building up their export trade after the war? That is a question to which the Department should give consideration. Last February the President of the Board of Trade announced that a committee was at work examining production for the export trade and that it had approached 52 industries concerned with the export business. That approach was made in the first instance by a broad-based questionnaire on which discussions were to be held. Can the Minister tell the House anything about the result of

those inquiries and the subsequent discussions?
To bridge the huge gap between imports and exports there are two alternatives. We have either to reduce imports or, somehow, to increase exports. Obviously the only possible cure is to increase our exports unless we are prepared to accept a permanently diminished standard of living. It will not be an easy task. In 1912 the cotton trade of this country accounted for one-third of the whole of British exports and represented something like 70 per cent. of the world total of export trade. At that period, coal and steel exports represented one-fifth of our total and we provided 80 per cent. of the world coal exports. By 1937 cotton and coal together accounted for a diminution in exports of no less than £70,000,000 a year, about one-seventh of our total British exports, in spite of a considerable rise in prices. It is clear from these figures that the old staple exports cannot any longer provide a solution. Moreover, many other industries will by that time have been supplanted by the enormous war-time expansion in the Dominions and elsewhere. I have had some opportunity during the war of seeing something of that expansion in Africa and other places. It will not be without its effect on the industries of this country. Military developments in the war have had an interesting effect in this regard. Thousands of Africans have been trained in the Services as tradesmen, and it may well be that a proportion of them when they go back to their civilian life will provide man-power for some of the new industries which have been established.
I am not one of those who are appalled or dismayed by that prospect. It would, in my opinion, be a mistake if any attempt were made by us—and I know it will not be made—to squeeze out these new industries. Let us encourage them because they will in the long run provide the most valuable market for capital goods and work for our heavy industries, which, incidentally, may be the very first of our trades to feel the draught after the war has come to an end. My right hon. Friend stressed the importance of Empire markets and showed that he was alive to the increasingly important part that many of us believe these markets will have to play after the war, particularly the Colonial markets. The higher standard


of living which we hope will arise from the growth of new industries in some of the Colonies will, in the long run, create a demand for additional goods from this country. The achievements of our heavy industries since 1939 have won us undoubtedly an enhanced reputation for engineering products of all kinds. Our inventors and technologists have proved in the war that they have been able to keep more than just ahead of their competitors, and I am convinced that their skill can equally well be transferred from war to the problems of peace. I am one of those who, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Luton, believes that we must concentrate upon quality products—and I would not exclude luxuries—in which skill and experience enter to a high degree. That and the tightening up of sales methods—market research, salesmanship and the like—will be industry's contribution to the post-war export trade, but my right hon. Friend and the Government must make their contributions, too. This must be conceived on broad lines and must not by any means be a niggling policy.
My next question then is, what progress has been made with the recently announced plan for reorganising the consular services which ought to be of considerable importance in the development of the export trade? Under pre-war conditions a manufacturer who wished to discover new openings for his goods had to send out his own personal representative from the country concerned. That was a difficult task, for not only had the individual to be an expert in his trade, but if he was to be effective, he had to know a great deal about the country to which he was sent. That is to say, he had to be endowed with a number of qualities which are rarely found in one individual. Now we are hoping that in the reformed Foreign. Service we may find room for the development of a trade branch with a status at least equal to that of the diplomatic branch.
It is essential that diplomatic duties and services of a general character should, as far as possible, be separated from commercial and trade duties. The types of men required to perform these jobs are quite different. Why, for example, should a man who has been trained in an engineering works or something like that be concerned with such duties as marrying and giving in marriage of a couple who

have taken into their heads to be married in some foreign city? Or, vice versa, why should a consul charged with other duties be expected to distribute catalogues or do work for some firm at home? There must be a separation of functions. Our trade, however, cannot wait until the day when the reformed Foreign Service has been put into effect. Many of us watched with pleasure the success of the Willing-don trade mission to South America in the early days of the war. They did a valuable job for export trade.
What are we doing to prepare commerce for the transition period? It would be useful for the Department to follow the example of the Fighting Services and to split up intelligence and operations. A world-wide trade intelligence system can only be supplied economically by the Government. It would be unnecessarily expensive for each industry to attempt to do so, and except with big firms it would be impossible. A system on the scale at least of war trade reporting officers, which was instituted for the purposes of our blockade of the enemy, is needed in peace time to keep industry in touch with business opportunities. As regards overseas trade plans, there is a function for both industry and Government co-operating in export councils for each industry. The Government's representative could keep industry informed of Government policies and also assist trade in the difficult period immediately after the war. The operation of overseas trade, if intelligence and operations were organised on that basis, could be left to normal trade channels without any further need of further Government concern. The cost demanded from the Government for such a set up would involve a considerable amount of finance.
I had the privilege for four years of acting as Parliamentary Private Secretary to a former Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who then represented Midlothian, and I had the opportunity of seeing some of the problems. There was a time when people even went so far as to say that the Department should be abolished. It is almost incredible that any one should suggest at any time that such an important function as overseas trade should not receive every possible support from the Government. I greatly hope that in the years after the war, theme will be a complete reversal of policy.


Every one recognises that for reasons of man-power the Department has had to be reduced, but I hope that plans are ready to expand it quickly after the war because, if we are to build up our export trade, we will need all the help we can get from the Government and everybody else. I sometimes wonder whether some of the methods adopted before the war were really the most effective and I was glad to hear from my right hon. Friend that they were considering the reorganisation of some of the services which they formerly supplied. I have the feeling, and I speak with some knowledge of industry, that far too much effort was devoted to producing long and admirable reports upon different countries, which appeared perhaps once a year, or in some cases once every other year, instead of giving much more frequent and up-to-date information. A great deal in those reports was merely academic in character, and I doubt whether many people read them. We want something much more up-to-date, and I should like to have some assurance that this is being considered.
Again, it is very important that these industries should be informed as early as possible after the war when the utility lines can be suspended and when it will be possible to branch out in new directions to try to regain some of the markets which have been lost. After the war there will be a stage when America and ourselves may have to play the principal part in assisting in the reconstruction of Europe. The Minister referred to sharing with our neighbours, and I am sure that all hon. Members recognise our obligations to the unfortunate nations who are at present overrun. I hope the closest consultation is taking place between ourselves and the many Allied Governments in London, so that when the time comes we shall be in a position to help them, at any rate with the necessities of life, as quickly as possible. I wonder whether it may not be possible—it may be in process for all I know—to do something in the way of building up at any rate small stocks of the most necessary manufactured goods to relieve the destitution which undoubtedly we shall find in some of these countries when we go in. Big changes are taking place in industry, a change over from the defensive to the offensive, and that means in many cases

alterations in our plants. It may well be that a certain amount of labour, at any rate for a temporary period, may be displaced, and I hope that if there should be any labour available this particular project of accumulating stocks for the conquered countries may not be overlooked.
Finally, we face a situation in which we have a Department which is undoubtedly experiencing a difficult period in that it has to try to run with a very much reduced staff. All of us recognise that what we must concentrate on after the war are high quality goods, but let us never forget that the basis of our postwar structure will be overseas trade. It will be quite impossible for us to introduce those many reforms and social services about which we have heard so much unless we have a strong and flourishing overseas trade. For that reason all will wish the Overseas Trade Department every success in the investigations upon which they are engaged in regard to future problems. We say to them "Press on with your investigations and let us know as soon as possible what are the concrete proposals of the Government for the post-war period."

Sir Edward Campbell: I am sure that we have all thoroughly enjoyed the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Colonel Mitchell). I look upon this Debate as one of the most important we have had for a long time, and I listened to the Minister with a great deal of pleasure, because I realise that more is perhaps being done than we hear of. For many years I was a merchant and also a British vice-consul, and therefore I think I know something about the subject and the necessity for the Overseas Trade Department to-day. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's tenure of office as Colonial Secretary is generally regarded as a turning point in the history of the relations between the British Colonies and the mother country. I wonder whether the President of the Board of Trade appreciates that his name, too, can go down to history, as the future prosperity of this country, and in fact of the world, depends almost entirely upon our ability to regain and increase our export trade directly the war ceases, and the present President of the Board of Trade can do a great deal to bring this about provided


he tackles the problem now with real determination and energy and a due appreciation of its importance in our post-war schemes.
We are spending to-day, let us call it about £400,000,000 per annum on our social services. Our ability to maintain that standard, let alone the large amount visualised in the Beveridge proposals, depends upon our ability to maintain national prosperity at the highest possible level. That is, it depends on practically everyone being in full employment. Unless we can get our export trade going again our hopes of that are slender. There are two reasons. The first is a matter of history and fact. British industry has been built up on the basis of the ability of the export market to absorb an important part of what we can produce. If we were to lose that export market the workers who had been producing goods for it would be out of a job. You may say that we would have to find other jobs for them. So we should.
That brings me to my second point. It was not just an accident which caused our industry to develop the supply of export goods. Our small island, with its dense population, has for many years past been unable to feed itself from the produce of its own soil, nor is it very richly endowed with raw materials. Our very life, therefore, depends upon our being able to import goods and raw materials from the four corners of the world; but we cannot bring them in unless we can pay for them, and the principal means of payment is in our export trade. The more, therefore, we have to find home trade jobs for people who have lost their employment in the export trades the smaller will be the range and volume of imports we can afford. At this moment we are sampling what happens when the range and volume of imports has to be reduced. We may have money in our pockets but we cannot spend it on what we want at the prices we want to pay. We all look forward to a world in which the earnings of full employment and the benefits paid out under our social services will once again command the things we want to have on our tables and in our homes.
Lei us never forget that the realisation of that hope depends on the re-establishment of a vigorous export trade, not merely the trade we did before the war,

because we shall need a much bigger trade than that to replace the income which came to us in pre-war days from overseas investments which we no longer possess. We have readily poured out those investments during the war in the common cause, and in the same cause we have handed over to our friends and competitors a great part of our traditional trade. The replacement of those overseas earnings which we have given up as part of our war effort must be an objective set in the very forefront of our peace effort. International trade was passing through many changes prior to the war; it was becoming more scientific and complex, and the old methods will be of little use after the war. Export firms must find out now, therefore, the probable world requirements. Many markets to which they exported in past years have been lost to them. They must therefore find new markets.
Export firms must start now to find out the methods of finance, currency, system of weights and measures, shipping facilities, etc., of any country to which they wish to export. Catalogues should be printed in the languages of those countries, not in English, as they used to be. That is a point I should like to emphasise particularly, because I know from personal experience that a man who knows languages when he goes abroad can be more useful than anybody else—even if it is only Scotch that he knows. A commercial traveller or an agent who is to represent British firms abroad must learn sufficient of the language of the country to which he is going to be able to read the local papers, read local catalogues, carry on a reasonable correspondence with the local people and engage in conversation.
When the appropriate time comes a director or manager of the home firm ought to make the initial exploitation on the spot, for one can gather more fundamental and practical knowledge of a country, of its people, requirements, markets and business methods by a personal visit than by years of correspondence or reading the reports of travellers or agents about a country we do not ourselves know. The men sent out must be the best obtainable—well educated, capable of getting on with foreigners, in other words "good mixers." I ought to say that a good mixer is a fellow who can get along with people, and if he has a


funny story to tell he ought not to tell it in the club when he is drunk and to the wrong people. I should like to tell a few funny stories, but I am afraid I should be ruled out of Order. If you are sending a man abroad send one who is capable of getting on with the local people. There are many clever people who are no use at all when they go abroad, because they are too British, or too Scotch, or too English, or too Welsh. I think it is very important that the people we send out should be able to get on with the people in the countries to which they are sent, and that they should have the regard of the firms who send them abroad, so that when their reports come home they will receive in any case reasonable consideration.
Although I have been closely attached to Government Departments for a great number of years I am, and always have been, a staunch believer in private enterprise, which, despite its critics, results in personal initiative and keenness and engenders a spirit of healthy competition. In saying this it must be understood that I only support private enterprise provided that it is efficient, up-to-date and progressive, and hon. Members should not forget that private enterprise pays for its own extravagance, experiments and mistakes, whilst the taxpayer pays for those of the State, though they are generally so wrapped up that the taxpayers never knew there was a mistake at all. Governments can, of course, assist private enterprise considerably. They can get information through the Overseas Trade Department and through the local consuls which private firms cannot get, and therefore a combination of private enterprise with Government assistance is the ideal goal to aim at, and friendly and practical cooperation between the two will result in great benefit to all concerned, the State as well as the individual.
In conclusion, I would say once again that the future prosperity of this country and our ability to afford the social services in which we all believe, depend upon a successful export trade, which will give remunerative work to millions of our people. There are many markets open now, and when we look around the world and realise the enormous difficulties facing our Allies and our enemies, we appreciate that the possibilities of the future are extraordinary, and we appreciate also

that we must be ready as soon as the war is ended. Somebody asked me the other day,—"How about this Lease-Lend, the Atlantic Charter and so on, will there not be a period of suspense?" There is never a period of suspense in business. One has to carry on and be ready and be up and doing. The man who gets in first, will get the business. Why should not we get the business? When the Government, or anyone else comes along with a plan for co-operation between the State and individuals, then we are right to take it and to work together. In the meantime the President of the Board of Trade and his colleagues are carrying on. I am glad to see that his colleague who made such an admirable speech is now in his place again. If he only knew it, he has one of the most important jobs in the Government. I sincerely hope that the President of the Board of Trade will realise that a lot of private traders are willing to work in collaboration with the Department, which is in possession of facts not available to private individuals. Let all work together for the good of the country.

Mr. Shinwell: Unlike the hon. Member who has just resumed his seat, I am unable to offer congratulations to the hon. Gentleman who opened the Debate with what I believe was his maiden effort at that Box. As the right hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Burgin) properly said, his speech was humdrum. It certainly was uninspiring. It was monotonous. It displayed a firm grasp of the obvious.

Mr. Johnstone: That is something.

Mr. Shinwell: It was completely lacking in the presentation of a constructive policy. We are well aware of what happened in pre-war days in a declining export situation. The facts are to be found in the Libraries of this House. We are equally well aware of the patient, and I will agree the constructive, efforts of successive Presidents of the Board of Trade during the war in the curtailment of civilian consumption and in the concentration of industry, while at the same time they kept an eye, so far as it was possible so to do, on the possibilities inherent in export trade. These facts are well known. They are not the primary consideration, which is, What is to be the future of our export trade?
On the assumption that my right hon. Friend opposite had that question firmly in his mind, he presented certain considerations to the House. I shall, for the convenience of hon. Members, enumerate them. They are the post-war plans of the Government in relation to export trade. First of all, there will be statistical reports on the export market position—very desirable and very orthodox. That is clearly no departure from existing policy. There are to be provided services, undefined, to exporters—no doubt very necessary. A committee has been set up. It has presented its initial report to the Minister without Portfolio, but the recommendations in it cannot be disclosed. I presume that if we questioned the Minister without Portfolio he would give the same reply, that no firm constructive reply could be adumbrated on this or on any other topic until every Government Department has been consulted as well as interests outside this House, and the Government had co-ordinated a policy and were in a position to come to the House and state their views. The war may well be over before that position emerges, and it may be too late to devise plans for the rehabilitation of our export trade in a remarkably complicated situation.
It is that theme that I propose to develop, to begin with. There will be no serious export problem immediately following the war. Why should there be? The markets will be there in Europe; who can doubt that? There will be unsatisfied consumer demands—yes, and in the United States, because of the absence of effective controls there. They have not imposed controls that we have adopted in this country, particularly for the curtailment of civilian consumption, and there will be an immediate demand which cannot be satisfied wholly from United States of America resources. They will be glad to buy goods from this country. After all, we must not forget that half the purchasing power of the world resides in the United States of America. That is a fact which it is not convenient to ignore.
So, immediately the war comes to its end, we shall have an export market. Our problem will not be to find markets but to find labour and raw material and to turn them into finished products to export abroad. That will be the immediate post-war position, but it will not last. There may—indeed, I am certain there

will—be a boom in the United States and probably in the Dominions and elsewhere. Certainly there will be a boom in European countries in the demand for goods. It is not certain that that boom will continue. Indeed, the greater the boom, the sooner it will be exhausted. It is then that we shall be faced with a serious position in regaining our export trade. If the United States developed an extensive and expansive social policy, for example in the creation of public works, absorbing the savings of the people of the United States, the demand would continue, and we should find something of a market, but if one is to judge by recent events, for example the dismissal of Mr. Henry Wallace, and the changing of what might be described as the ideological position of the United States, it is not at all certain that that nation will adopt an internal, social, public works policy, based upon high wages and a high demand for consumer goods, which would enable them to absorb much of the export from this country and the Dominions.
What then is to be the position? It is estimated that the income of the United States of America after the war will be in the region of £30,000,000,000. It is also estimated that the savings of the people of that nation out of that huge income will be in the region of £8,000,000,000. If this sum can be used either for the purpose of the internal market, purchasing goods from abroad, or used for the purpose of developing an investment policy, as it will be, and of sending the surplus of goods produced in the United States into all the markets of the world, there will be the competitive factor with which this country has to deal. When that critical moment arrives and in that export trade situation, America, whether we like it or not, will be the dominating factor. It is regrettable, but it is true and we have to consider the nature of the policy that ought to be adopted in the light of that situation.
That brings me to the question of the principle underlying our export trade. I join issue with hon. Members opposite who have spoken on this subject. We have been told that unless we develop a great export trade and regain our old-time position—it is not clear whether by that is meant the position when we exported £1,000,000,000 worth or only £400,000,000 worth of goods—we could not support a decent standard of life in


this country. The two hon. Members who preceded me actually declared that we could not provide for our social services, much less for the Beveridge proposals, unless we built up a great export trade. For sheer poppycock that statement takes the biscuit.

Sir P. Hannon: The speeches of my hon. Friends do not lend themselves to the interpretation put upon them by the hon. Member. They did mention, I think rightly, that the development of an expansive and expanding export trade was vital to the interests of this country.

Mr. Shinwell: They emphatically stated that we could not sustain our social services and the high standard of living unless we did so on the basis of an export trade. I have got confirmation of what I have just said. I will join issue with the critics. If we take the average years preceding the war, we find that the total volume of our export trade in many fields amounted annually to about £400,000,000, that is, about 8 per cent. of our annual income. There are some industries that do not export at all; some, as in the case of the coal industry, export round about 19 or 20 per cent. of their production. But what were the profits? On the whole volume of our export trade—

Mr. Hammersley: Is the hon. Member trying to develop the argument that the relationship between the export trade and the total amount of trade has nothing to do with the necessity of whether we have to maintain and develop our export trade?

Mr. Shinwell: In due course my hon. Friend will see what I am about. I am dealing with the arguments adduced on the other side. I think it is about time that such fallacies were removed. Certainly they are likely to be disproved. I was dealing with the question of profits when the hon. Member interrupted. The fact is that on the basis of 10 per cent. the profits were only about £40,000,000. Will anyone suggest that out of the proceeds of our export trade, which by the way have got to find their way into the coffers of the Imperial Exchequer before they can be used for social purposes, we can sustain our social services? It is not out of our export trade that we sustain our social services; it is out of our internal

resources. We have always done so, and in fact we always will. If we are to have a repetition of the old argument that was used by members of the Conservative Party before the war, that unless you build up your export trade and that will be at the expense of a low standard of life in certain export industries—for example, the coal industry—you cannot build up social services. We had better have it out now and be done with it, because it is a very serious issue.
It is alleged that we export for the purpose of providing employment. We do nothing of the sort. If you want to provide employment, you need not export. For example, instead of exporting machinery you might produce houses and thus provide as much employment in the country in an internal direction; instead of exporting whisky to the United States of America, you might perhaps make clothing in this country. That is the way to provide employment. Employment does not depend on export. [An HON. MEMBER: "The general well-being of the country does."] We will come to that. Let us take an industry very much affected by export in relation to employment and the standard of life. In the coal export industry, the greatest exporting industry in the country, to the extent, as I have said, of 19 to 20 per cent. in an average year before the war, the wage standards in the mining industry, particularly in the export section, were far from satisfactory. No one would regard them as providing an adequate standard of life. In fact, we have repeatedly had Debates in this House in the course of which certain hon. Members have declared—we have all heard them—that if we were to build up our export trade in a competitive market, it was necessary for the workers in this country to recognise the fact and accept lower standards. We have been told that over and over again. Thus we have the old arguments about the sheltered and unsheltered industries; we are all familiar with them.
I apologise to the House for raising this issue, but I do it with a purpose. One thing we must do in order to deal adequately with this question of trade, internal and external—at the moment we are concerned with the external aspect—is to get away from the old shibboleths, the old devices, the orthodox methods,


which are outworn and should be discarded. We have had nothing but that from the right hon. Member opposite today, committees here and there, foreign attachés to deal with commercial matters abroad. It is the old stuff. The only wonder is that he did not say anything about the future fiscal policy. But then he is in a special difficulty. He is a representative of the Liberal Party—of one of the Liberal Parties. It will be very interesting to know what are his views about our future fiscal policy, whether in fact he thinks we ought to abandon the Import Duties Act. I know that involves legislation, so I will leave it at that. That is all we have had to-day—orthodoxy—and we have had it from Members on the opposite benches.
Orthodoxy was all right in the old days but not in relation to the future. We have this American competitive position, and what is more a competitive position that arises from the facts which the war has thrown up. One of them is that as a result of the war—it was developing before the war—secondary industries have developed in the Dominions. Take Canada, which is producing more merchant ships than we do. Is it suggested that Canada is going to abandon her ship building industry after the war? It may be very costly, as I said in the shipping Debate recently, which is a bull point for us. We may be able to produce more cheaply, but it is unlikely that Canada will abandon her secondary industries. Australia has been developing her secondary industries, and I have had an opportunity of discussing the matter with people associated with finance and industry from Australia. They all agree that it will be difficult for Australia to abandon her secondary industries. Therefore, we are faced with very difficult problems. One of them is that as a result of the development of secondary industries in the Dominions they cannot take in future all our manufactured goods. We on the other hand, for many reasons which I need not advance, because they are known to all hon. Members, cannot take all the primary produce of the Dominions. Indeed, that was the reason why it was necessary for Australia to enter into an agreement with Japan on the wool question—we could not buy the whole of the wool clip. These are new facts that have emerged, and we have to face up to them.
In spite of what I have said about the export position, I believe it is necessary to have an export trade. Of course it is necessary. [Interruption.] Perhaps I had better tell hon. Members why. Because we have to pay for imports. It never seems to have occurred to some Members that that is the reason why you must have export trade. If you could afford, as a result of rationing, seriously to curtail your civilian consumption, particularly in those commodities which we get from abroad, we should not need to bother about export trade at all, because we would not have to pay for imports. We have to export in order to pay for imports. What is the sole advantage, the exclusive advantage, of imports? It is when you get goods coming into the country that cost less than it would cost to produce them at home; otherwise what is the advantage? The only advantage that is derived is in the increasing of national income. If as a result of your trading process you fail to increase your national income, you have gained nothing. If you buy goods from abroad that cost more than they would cost to produce in this country what do you gain? Nothing at all. You must always buy them at a rate cheaper than that at which they could be produced in this country.
That is the reason for our export trade. It has nothing to do with employment or social services. It is just a business arrangement, with this qualification, that the arrangement has been effected on wrong lines. It has been hampered first of all by the fetish of Free Trade, and, secondly, by the shibboleth of Tariff Reform, when in fact what we want, and indeed what we must have, is what we are having during the war, namely, controlled trade. Why do I say controlled trade? Because we have to determine the nature of our export. It must not be left to what is called the enterprise of the individual entrepreneur to determine, because he may say, "I shall import wine into this country," when we do not want wine but timber. What is more, it affects shipping space, which may be a vital consideration after the war for some considerable time. We also must not only determine what is to come into the country but also what is to leave the country. In other words, we ought not to allow in a critical trading situation luxury imports to come in and luxury goods to go out.
In short, the direction of our trade, to put it in a sentence, must be controlled by the State itself. That does not mean State ownership. I am not advocating that at present. Unless that is done, I am afraid it will go hard with us. Take the question of capital. The hon. Gentleman said not a word about it to-day—the most fundamental issue of all. Are we to revert to the position when it was possible for anybody to export capital? That would be suicide. We cannot allow that at all. That means State direction, and capital is the focal point in relation to your trading power. Something more we must do is to promote bilateral agreements. What do I mean by that? I do not mean that we should promote bilateral agreements which are exclusive in character and which disregard the rest of the world, but bilateral agreements which are based on this principle, "We buy from you if you buy from us." That is fair enough, no tariffs about it, no import duties about it except maybe as mechanical devices. That is the method. In fact, I am now a little orthodox myself, because we were developing that system before the war and with great success. I took part in Debates in this House on that subject, as did the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. Graham White), who is an authority on this subject, and the hon. Member for East Willesden (Mr. Hammersley), and we encouraged the Government of the day to promote those trade agreements. That ought to be developed.
Having gone so far, I want to present what I regard as a constructive view. The House may not agree with me, but one must speak as one feels. The first thing is that we must plan. The second is that we cannot plan for Britain alone. It is too small a unit. For example, we cannot grow all our wheat here, nor can we produce all the commodities we want to. Therefore, we have to consider our relationship with other parts of the world. Can we plan our foreign trade, not exclusively but in very large measure, within the Commonwealth structure? I must preface what I am about to say by this observation. I beg my hon. Friends behind me not to imagine that I am developing into a quasi-Imperialist. I know that the Liberal Party—or what remains of it—is still in the mid-Victorian era.

We must not pay too much attention to them. There are difficulties about this Commonwealth trading structure. The Dominions cannot take all our manufactured goods, because they are fast developing secondary industries and they have to buy from the United States and other countries, and we cannot take all their food products. There are some remarkable facts about our trading position. We hear a great deal about Anglo-American co-operation. I am all for Anglo-American co-operation, I am all for international co-operation, for world cooperation; but first things first. Let us consider the facts underlying this possible co-operation. It is a remarkable fact—I hope there are not too many Ulster Members present—that Eire is actually as good a customer to us as the United States. It always has been. I am not speaking about the present position; there is a diminution in the trade now. The United States purchased from us, on an average, 30-odd million pounds worth of goods a year, and we purchased from them about £120,000,000 worth. There was always an adverse balance, made up, of course, by invisible exports, but they have disappeared. I would say in parenthesis—although it is very important—that if we want to regain our export trade on the basis of present prices, which may continue for some time, and in view of the fact that we have not our foreign investments available to us, it would be necessary for us to have an export trade of 1,000,000,000 annually. How you are going to get that trade, I do not know.

Sir P. Hannon: With regard to trade with Ireland, the hon. Member knows that Ireland is a non-industrial country and required an immense amount of manufactured goods from us, while we bought from Ireland a large amount of agricultural products. It is a case of two corresponding markets one rural and the other urban.

Mr. Shinwell: Of course; but that does not dispose of the fact. With the exception of South Africa, Eire was the only country with which we had no adverse balance of trade whatever. You may regard Eire as an exception. At the moment we are not favourably disposed to her; and for very good reasons. What are the facts about our Dominion trade? Of our export trade, of, roughly, £400,000,000 per year in the years pre-


ceding the war—you must not take 1939, when we had a huge foreign trade, largely because we were rearming—the Dominions and Colonies took about half. They were very good customers. This is not a question of sentiment there is no question of cousinly ties and affection and the like. It is a question of business. If you are running a business concern and you have a number of commercial travellers, you do not tell them to go out and seek business in a highly competitive market, where there are difficulties; you send them to a district which is favourable and where there is good will. I hope my hon. Friends will acquit me of any sentiment on this question. I have none at all. Moreover, there are huge possibilities latent in the position of Australia; a possibility of migration, which ought to be linked up with the possibility of expansion and the development of her resources. That is an essential prerequisite of peace after the war. New Zealand is not a large country, but there are possibilities there. With regard to South Africa, I understand that General Smuts delivered himself of the statement recently that South Africa supports a white population of 2,000,000 now and could support a population of 20,000,000. I think that is highly exaggerated, but certainly she could support a much large population than she has. And South Africa is one of the two countries with which we have a favourable balance of trade. The question is whether you can build up a Commonwealth commercial entity, not exclusive in character, but ready to collaborate with the rest of the world, a commercial entity based on business considerations in addition to good will. We should seek to achieve that, and all the more so because of the American competitive position, which will face us after the war.

Sir P. Hannon: Does the hon. Member suggest that we should have an economic unity within the British Empire? What about countries outside?

Mr. Shinwell: There is no time to develop this subject in detail. The ideas are percolating in one's mind, and I wanted to depart from the orthodox ideas which have been debated so far. I think that we ought to go to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, and say, "We want to trade with you, will you trade with us? We want to assist you in an expansion policy and in the

development of your resources, and you will be able to assist us." I want to do more than that; I want to consider what is the role of Great Britain in the future Europe. That is very important. So far, as a result of developments in recent years, the German economic method has dominated Europe. That will be generally agreed. I will not discuss their special technique: a very clever technique, a very subtle technique, and a very successful technique; much more successful than we like to think. What are the possibilities in Europe when the war ends? We have the utmost good will towards Soviet Russia, but Soviet Russia will be preoccupied with her internal affairs—I am speaking in an economic sense—perhaps for a long time.
Who is to assume the rôle of leader, in an economic sense, not with a view to domination, but with a view to leading them out of the pit into which the Nazis have driven them and reorganising their economy, not in a condescending fashion: with no stigma of charity about it? I think that that rôle must be taken by Great Britain. There are great possibilities. Such a scheme must not be exclusive in character. There will be Denmark, Sweden, Norway, a revived Finland—a democratic Finland, on good terms with her neighbour Russia—the Dutch, with their huge Empire—let us not forget that—and the great French Empire; to say nothing of the Empire which we have acquired in North Africa ourselves, and which offers possibilities, unless we propose—it has not been made quite clear—to put those territories under international mandate, or hand them back to the natives. At any rate, there is a possibility of social and economic development in those territories, and they provide possibilities for our export trade. When we have created a European federation, closely allied to the Commonwealth, for economic purposes, we are in a strong position to talk; but a country with 45,000,000 souls cannot talk on terms of equality with a country of 130,000,000, particularly in view of the resources of the latter country. There is a lot more to be said on this head, but I am occupying a lot of time, and I must come to a conclusion soon. I want to negotiate with those countries on terms of equality.
Now I will end as I began. Prosperity, in my judgment, does not depend so


much on external as on internal trade. It is on the development of your own internal resources that you build up wealth for the development of your own people, and we have much internal wealth in this country.

Mr. Levy: Does the hon. Member mean the development of the raw material resources which this country possesses?

Mr. Shinwell: I want to develop our raw material resources. This is not the occasion to develop the subject, for example, of hydrogenation relating to the coal industry, or the question of plastics, with which my hon. Friend is familiar. There are great developments pending in connection with the new synthetic industries, and it may be that much of the raw material we have had from other countries will not be necessary. The world is changing, in an economic as well as a political sense, and we have to be in the van of progress, and not talk in terms of shibboleths, particularly such as were used by the hon. Member for Bromley (Sir E. Campbell), with his introduction of funny stories.

Sir E. Campbell: I have had more experience of business than my hon. Friend ever had.

Mr. Shinwell: What does his experience of business matter? We are told by the hon. Member that what we want are people who can tell funny stories. Who is going to pay attention to that kind of pabulum? If we are going to develop the standard of life of our people, it must be in the main by our internal industries. Lastly, I want to say that there must be no question of subsidies for private industry nor any question of subsidies given at the expense of the internal section of the industry in order to gain export trade. That is ruinous. Moreover, it is done at the expense of the worker at home. If there are to be subsidies—and I can conceive that there may have to be—it must be based on State direction and a large measure of State control.

Mr. Levy: There is no need for subsidies.

Mr. Shinwell: There may be no need for subsidies at all. There was a subsidy on the coal industry borne on wage ascertainments. It is the same in all industries.

You are not going to build your trade on that basis. I have perhaps spoken strongly and feelingly but I believe it is necessary. Again, I repeat that it is essential to discard out-worn orthodox methods. They have served their turn. We must have new devices and, unless we proceed in that direction, all this talk about the revival of export trade will count for nothing.

Sir Granville Gibson: Before I get on to the general tenor of the export trade, I would like to refer to the interruption I made during the speech of the Minister in regard to the activities of the U.K.C.C. I feel that the U.K.C.C. have not advertised themselves sufficiently in this country. Their activities have been enormous during the war period, and they are doing a great service, and I hope that the President of the Board of Trade, in his reply, will make reference to that matter. I remember distinctly how on 2nd February, 1943, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made what I considered to be a very fine speech in this House, when he referred to a matter which had been addressed to him by the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell). He said that we must rely in the main on a considerable expansion of exports. They were our life. Upon them would largely depend our status of life after the war, and our future hopes and plans for the betterment of this country greatly rested upon them, and unless we could have a great move forward in our export trade we should fail. With that view, no doubt, the hon. Member for Seaham entirely disagrees. He said the reason we buy imported goods is because in the main we can buy them cheaper. It is nothing of the kind.

Mr. Shinwell: I did not say that. I said that the only advantage we gained' was that we could buy them cheaper than it costs to produce them at home.

Sir G. Gibson: Still the hon. Member is not quite right. Such a large percentage of our imports are primaries which we are compelled to import, as we cannot produce them. At the beginning of the war £850,000,000 of these primaries were imported. But I must congratulate the hon. Member for Seaham on his very bold and courageous speech, in which he has blossomed out as a full-blooded protectionist.

Mr. Shinwell: Oh, no.

Sir G. Gibson: The hon. Member said, "We will not take your imports unless you take our exports." Therefore, why does he not come over to our Benches? I did not hear a cheer from his colleagues to-day.

Mr. Shinwell: That is not protection.

Sir G. Gibson: It is the protection of our own people. Very few people in this country realise the extreme seriousness of post-war export trade and its prospects. They do not seem to take the slightest interest in the export trade. The industrialists of this country have a feeling that nobody troubles or cares about exports, past, present or future. Those of us who are connected with industry, and particularly with the export trade, as I have been for many years, cannot wonder at that. It does not touch the general run of people in their daily lives, and they do not realise it, but it is very serious. If we cannot fill the gap between our exports and imports, it will affect the lives of every man and woman in this country, and we cannot help it. Only two years ago, when I was in New York, I could, if I had had the dollars available, buy sterling at 2.50 dollars to the £. I remember being in New York the day before the outbreak of war, and I could not change a £5 Bank of England note, and I was in New York just after the last war, during the slump of 1921–22, when the exchange rate went down to 3.60 to the £. Whatever the hon. Member for Seaham says—and he is very sincere in what he says in this House, and I pay great attention to what he says and listen carefully—he is entirely up the wrong street with regard to disregarding the vital importance of the maintenance of the balance between our exports and imports. Those of us who have to buy in sterling and make our purchases in foreign markets know that, if there is more sterling sold than bought, sterling weakens, and every farthing's worth of materials, either primary or foodstuffs, costs more, and the cost of living goes up, and our social services must inevitably suffer. Speaking personally, it is not because I would rather have export trade than home trade, but because I and many hon. Members realise that it is vitally important that our exports should be kept up to balance with our imports in order that the £ sterling may maintain steadiness and purchases may be made

month after month and year after year. It all helps in making purchases and buying forward.

Mr. Levy: Unless we have a tremendous export trade, how on earth are we to provide full employment for the people in this country?

Sir G. Gibson: I agree with the hon. Member for Seaham. I feel that in the few years following the close of the war there will probably be an enormous demand in industry in this country as there was after the last war. We may then drift—I hope we shall not—into a slump, but European countries which have been over-run and denuded of commodities and clothing will need to be clothed and fed. There are very few champions of export trade in this country. For the past twenty years the Department of Overseas Trade has done a remarkably good job in this country for the export trade. It has been very helpful, but in the past two or three years it seems to have become obscure, impotent, somnolent, dormant or whatever you will, and I blame the Department for dilatoriness in granting licences for export trade.

Mr. Johnstone: The Department does not grant licences.

Sir G. Gibson: It does not grant licences but at any rate it influences the granting of them. I feel that the export trade has been influenced to a great extent by the opinions of the controllers of various industries. In the main these controllers have done a splendid job of work in their own industries. Speaking of my own industry, we have a controller who is a first-class man. But these controllers have to look after the Services and civilian needs and have not the slightest interest in the export trade. He would be a bold Minister who would advise the export trade in face of these controllers who have not the slightest interest in the export trade. I know of cases, where the export trade has been cut down because of the recommendations of these controllers.
The Board of Trade seems to a great extent to be interested ot the present time in the home market. I wonder sometimes whether we have not sold our birthright for a mess of pottage. An outstanding example of the wilful and light-hearted way in which exports are being repeatedly destroyed is the recent proposal of the


Board of Trade to prohibit the exportation of all footwear to Canada, the United States and, in fact, to the whole of the Western hemisphere. The boot manufacturers—I am not one of them, although I am in an allied industry—have built up a very valuable, though not very large in volume, specialised, high-class trade in boots and shoes. The exports in 1941 came to 250,000 pairs, compared with the production of this country of 140,000,000 pairs and 500,000,000 pairs in the United States. The exportation of 250,000 pairs is not a great amount of export, but it has been built up slowly over a considerable number of years. There are no shipping difficulties in the way. Ships are going Westwards with plenty of empty space. There is reason to believe that this proposal emanated entirely from officials in this country, and no request was received from any Government in the countries concerned that these exports should be prohibited.
From 1941 to 1943 the Board of Trade seems to have lost all interest in the export trade. It now appears to be waking up once more to the vital importance of the maintenance of those contacts which have been built up over a number of years and which are not easily picked up once they are lost. It is well known that our exports, compared with the beginning of the war, have fallen to 25 per cent. of what they were—from £400,000,000 to £100,000,000, only a quarter of the volume of 1938. Markets have been closed to our exports all over the world except in the Dominions but for the granting of export licences. The way of the exporter is very hard indeed. We were, until the outbreak of war, the greatest exporting country in the world. We are the greatest importing country in the world. We have the best social services and a standard of living as high as that of any other country. Investments were accumulated abroad and stood us in good stead in the last war and to a lesser extent in this war, and all this has been done by private enterprise, a system which is more or less condemned by hon. Members above the Gangway on this side of the House. The situation today is too serious to be played about with any longer. The economic life of the nation will be at stake, and the very existence of the people demands urgent consideration of this important matter without any further delay.
Any extension and development are impossible in these days unless profits are ploughed hack into industry during the war period. As industrialists we cannot possibly do that. Despite the assurance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to the 20 per cent. reserved from E.P.T. for use after the war, we still look on it as the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow which will never be reached. When application is made for repayment to help us in our export trade, to buy new machinery and reorganise our works, there are so many difficulties and conditions put in the way that most industrialists do not for a moment dream that they will ever touch any of it. The Prime Minister, in his wonderful broadcast on the four years plan, pointed out the unprecedented and sterilising level of taxation to-day and that while we are willing to bear these taxes now in the national interest, they must be taken away after the war at the earliest possible moment. How can firms with low profit standards face the future with confidence if they have no profits to plough back into their industry to enable them to re-equip?

Mr. Montague: Has the hon. Member read the statement by Mr. Henry Ford in his book, "My Life," that industry ought to be fructified at the core and not at the periphery?

Sir G. Gibson: That is the point I was trying to put before the House. The profits made at the core of the business should be left in the business and not be taken away by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Industries which have been playing their part and which will have to have finance to carry on their trade after the war have suffered. The export trade bears upon one vitally important point, namely, the necessary finance to carry on increased business. We shall be faced with other difficulties, such as providing extended credit to countries which have been denuded of goods. I want to know whether it is likely that banking facilities will be available at a low rate of interest for extended periods in order to help industry to carry forward export trade in as great a bulk as possible. There must be a long period of steadiness of prices of primary commodities. I agree with the hon. Member for Seaham that there should be control of certain primary commodities for some time after the war in order to keep prices steady. Nothing


more adversely affects the working classes of this country than unsteady prices of primary commodities. You cannot have confidence when you are wondering whether prices are going up or down, and the result is that it is difficult to maintain a steady flow of business. All this requires a stabilised currency, and I was pleased to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer say recently that he welcomed the International Clearing Union as a step in the right direction.
To gain export trade, we must have efficient production not only by the employee but by the employer. We must have a high rate of production by the employee in order to maintain high wages. Inefficiency and a low rate of production must produce a low standard of living. I feel, with the Minister, that after the war we must specialise in medium and higher grade goods. Let the 1½d. an hour countries make the cheap shoddy stuff in the future. Let Japan, China and India do it. But let us use the Too years' accumulated skill of our people to produce goods of quality. If we do, we shall be on the right lines. I would like to ask whether it is intended to alter the Ottawa Agreements in order to grant us the same facilities of freedom in their markets for manufactured goods as we grant to other countries in ours? Better organisation of export goods is required, because such organisation would be of enormous help, not only to the large firms, but to the small firms. Some people have the idea that the City of Birmingham is a city of 1,000,000 people in which there are nothing but huge firms such as Austins and the like which employ thousands of people. But a little while ago the average number of employees in Birmingham per firm was only 48. There are small firms which have never taken any part in export trade but which will be interested in taking part in the future. Export groups can play an important part in assisting them.
Many of our troops now abroad will be possessed of the wanderlust when they return. Only the other day the father of F. young man in North Africa told me that his son had written to him saying that he did not wish to come back to a stockbroker's office but wished to see something of the world. Our young fighting men are learning languages while they are

away—Spanish, German, French and Italian—and these will be the fellows to send out to various parts of the world in the future in the search for more export trade. If 44 nations could go to Hot Springs, Virginia, and agree to a great extent about food supplies after the war, I do not see why the Government should not consider the question of international trade in the same way. It will have to be considered internationally. The world will no longer be our open market. Countries which were our happy hunting grounds will be our keenest competitors.
To-day Argentina is forging ahead in South Africa. Exports have been organised under the name. of "Camara de Exportadores," which aims at presenting a united front in concert with world economy, co-operating to solve material shortages and at intensifying Argentinian trade abroad. The United States of America are carrying on very extensive advertising propaganda in India. They have stated that the new contacts which have been established in time of war with India will be maintained and extended in peace-time. Entirely distinct from Lend-Lease shipments, exports from America to India more than doubled in 1942 as compared with 1939. These are very significant figures, and I hope the Minister will bear them in mind. It must be part of the policy of our Government to ensure that the countries from whom we buy our primaries must take a reasonably corresponding value of our exports. This country was built up by men who have risked their all by private enterprise. It was a great spirit of business enterprise to every corner of the earth and a concentration of manufactured goods which the world wanted which sent our fellow countrymen to live and work in distant lands. After this war will such men be again available? I am sufficiently optimistic to believe that they will and that they will realise that without exports we cannot live.

Mr. Graham White: If, as the hon. Member for Pudsey and Otley (Sir G. Gibson) says, the Department of Overseas Trade has been so dormant and somnambulent, I have been wondering what adjective one could apply to a House of Commons which has waited until the last few days before the Summer Recess before raising a discussion on a matter which is of the greatest import-


ance whether from our point of view at home or from that of the peaceful development of the world. There may be a reason for it, but it is a remarkable and unfortunate thing that we should have left the subject of overseas trade so long undebated. We have listened to many practical suggestions and schemes with regard to exchange. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey and Otley mentioned a number, but I think this Debate has very largely missed putting the question in the right perspective because the whole future of our overseas trade depends, as the Minister said in a sentence towards the end of his speech, upon whether the United Nations agree and remain agreed on carrying out a universal policy of expansion. Upon that depends the whole practicability of making anything of the postwar world.
We are to-day facing a desperate war for survival because the world would not face up the problems presented by a condition of economic plenty. It adopted the cowardly policy of restriction both at home and abroad. The atmosphere has changed with regard to that, but unless we are prepared to turn our backs on old shibboleths and adopt an entirely new attitude we shall find ourselves back again in the squalid era of bitter retaliation and bickerings—which the Prime Minister denounced so rightly—when the whole object of one country was to put some into employment at the cost of putting others out of work somewhere else. In so far as this Debate helps to clear our minds on that matter and concentrate our attention and purpose on a policy of expansion in the interests of full employment everywhere, it will serve a vastly important purpose. We have spoken of the difficulties which will occur when peace comes upon us. We are working up to the major crisis of this war and we have no doubt as to how it will end, although it may be at a cost which we do not yet realise. But when we have passed from the crisis of the war we shall come to the crisis of the peace. Whether we shall overcome the crisis of the peace depends upon whether the comradeship, common interest and self-sacrifice which we have won and strengthened during the war between the United Nations will be strong enough to overcome the inherited prejudices, traditional animosities, shibboleths and destructive machinery of the

past. That is the question. If we cannot win the crisis of the peace we are wasting our time in discussing the practical statements which hon. Members have put before the House to-day.
My hon. Friend the Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) made, as he always does, an important, able, and interesting speech. On this occasion I would like to add the further adjective "intriguing." I could not help thinking that he must have formed an alliance with right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot)—whose continued absence from the House we greatly regret—who, in a recent article in "The Times," said that owing to the great advance of science and the great increase in sources and means of production it would be no longer necessary for any country to have any export trade at all and that in a short space of time we would be entirely self-contained. I thought the hon. Member had some idea of that kind, but that was a fleeting impression which passed away as his speech developed. I am bound to say that with the greater part of it I was in a great measure of agreement. There was a point at which there seemed to be a difference between him and my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey and Otley who, if I understood him aright, suggested that there must be complete freedom of the movement of capital on the coming of peace. The hon. Member for Seaham, I gathered, was in favour of restriction of the movement of capital.

Sir G. Gibson: I did not refer to the movement of capital.

Mr. White: Then I misunderstood my hon. Friend. Of course, in regard to the movement of capital, as in many other respects, we have to put up as best we can with the position. It will be essential to have over all direction for a considerable time in the immediate future after the war, and even greater strengthening and stringency than there has been in the immediate past, especially in regard to the supplying of food stuffs and what one might call the materials for rescue. There will be in the situation which will appear at the end of the war all the elements for complete chaos. It is net open to question that there is in Europe to-day, for the first time in the history of the world as far as I know, a complete system of trade control, a Continental


system. It is conducted on the basis that the people who have to carry it out will do what they are told and will be shot if they do not. It is working for the benefit of the Nazi party. That system is going to be dissolved. There will be the greatest possible difficulty in any other way.
It has been pointed out that our present position does not allow of any orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a thing we have heard the last of, I hope, for a long time. Our difficulties, and perhaps some of our successes, may be due to the fact that, whereas before the war we were a creditor country, to-day to the extent of nearly £1,000,000,000, we are indebted to other countries who previously owed us money. That situation, properly handled, may help our export trade. But there it is. The whole question depends on whether or not we are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to co-operate in the world expansion of trade with all other countries of goodwill. The hon. Member for Sea-ham appeared as the apostle of a new Imperialism. I will yield to no one in my belief in the mission of the British Empire and the work which it has still to do, and which I believe it will carry out. But I am also convinced that, whatever we may do to determine in advance the course of trade after the war by means of concrete proposals, of which so many useful ones are being made—the Hot Springs Conference and the entirely new order of economic affairs which has been indicated by Lease-Lend, the Atlantic Charter and Canadian help—these things are signs of a new order of things. We should play up to it and see that these things are maintained and encouraged, and should not hark back to the shibboleths and orthodoxies of the past. We have an opportunity to make a new world if we wish to do so.
The hon. Member for Seaham seemed to range himself alongside Lord Bennett, who took occasion on Friday to review the trade of the world, and of the Empire in particular. He deprecated talk about a new world. A new world may or may not be possible, but the first step towards a new world is a belief that it is possible. The belief in a new world, in the economic and every other sense, is one of the most potent forces in maintaining the morale of our fighting men. It is because they believe that they are not coming back

to the old pattern of things that they are making the sacrifices they are making to-day. Lord Bennett indicated that it meant a change in human nature It is an odd thing that human nature is always called in aid when people wish to excuse themselves from doing something which is right, or for some special act of human failing or depravity. Whatever may be the position with regard to the immutability of human nature, there is one thing which can and does change, and that is man's conduct. It has changed for the worse during the war. It has reached depths of depravity which a few years ago we should have thought incredible, but the merciful fact remains that the exercise of barbarity and brutality in the course of this war has created and roused in opposition the greatest qualities of which man is capable—courage, self sacrifice and the will to work for common aims.
I am glad to say that in the economic field, as in every other, there is evidence of a new order in the world. Let those who doubt it read the final act of the Food Conference at Hot Springs and they will see running through it a common purpose. Again, if they turn to the postwar plans of the United States, they will find the same co-operative anti-isolationist spirit and purpose prevailing there—a very different proposition from that advocated by Lord Bennett and the hon. Member for Seaham when they envisage after the war the United States of The Empire ranged against the rest of the world. We can influence the course of events by the way we discuss our problems and by the character of our approach to their solution. The worst possible way to influence the future course of events is to talk in this defeatist way, imagining that the end of it is to see the British Empire ranged against the rest of the world. The noble Viscount's speech was mischievous talk of the worst description and I hope there will be no more of it.

Sir P. Hannon: On a point of Order. Is the hon. Gentleman in order in so describing the speech of a Noble Lord outside?

Mr. Speaker: Yes. Provided the speech was not made in another place.

Mr. White: I hope the hon. Gentleman will believe that I should be the last to be guilty of discourtesy. The phrase I used was "mischievous talk," an expres-


sion in common parlance. It is a tremendously difficult task for the United Nations to build up a state of economy upon which a sound political basis can rest, but there is no need for despair. As far as our resources are concerned, there is ground for very considerable optimism. Let us, in the industrial community, put away the inferiority complex which was developing so strongly before the war. Let us rest in the future on our achievements during the war. We have shown, and learnt, that British workmen, when properly led, organised and equipped, can turn out in a day as much goods of a fine quality as any other country in the world. That must be the basis of the service.

Sir Patrick Hannon: I will not follow the hon. Gentleman in the line he has taken but I am certain that the Noble Viscount to whom he referred deserves the thanks of the Commonwealth for the services he has rendered. I am glad to have been here and to have had an opportunity of hearing the speech of the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department. I think some of us felt that the House would like to see him again. We have not seen him for a long time and we were wondering what contribution he was making to the preparation for post-war policy. We have had to-day an outline of the course that he intends to pursue. His Department, as he said, has been charged with very important functions and, as far as one knows, the work that has been accomplished by the various expert committees attached to the Department has been well done, but there has, somehow or other, been a want of leadership in the direction of the policy of the Department since the war broke out. I am bound to say that, after repeated appeals to my right hon. Friend, manufacturers who became embarrassed in the process of their export trade did not receive any substantial help from his Department. On the other hand, the President of the Board of Trade has been most kind and most helpful and has received deputations and given substantial help. We felt all along that there was some difficulty in the precise work that the Department was doing.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Dalton): My right hon. Friend has been helping me.

Sir P. Hannon: The expert committees, and some distinguished officers of the Department, were doing valuable work in relation to the export trade but, of the Department itself as such, we heard very little in the House and we did not get much stimulating advice. I say that with a good deal of reluctance because I always like to praise Ministers when they are worthy of it. I hope that after the criticisms that have been made the Department of Overseas Trade will arouse itself from its slumbers and start on the work with which it was originally entrusted. We had a remarkable speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell). I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White) that the hon. Member for Seaham is developing tendencies towards Imperialism which we on this side of the House gladly welcome. The suggestions made in the course of his speech were, I thought, derived from that wisdom which grows with further experience in tackling the economic and social problems with which he has to contend from time to time.
I would like to put to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department one or two questions. The first is, what is being done to create a real understanding with industrial organisations in the United States vís-à-vís the problems of the future? In February last 4,000 American manufacturers—people may criticise big business in this country, but big business in the United States is a much more formidable proposition—went to New York to spend a week junketing, and they passed a series of resolutions making it quite clear that the whole influence of their organisation, political and economic, would be exercised for the removal of controls at the earliest possible moment after the war and for making them perfectly free to compete in the world markets. That is a matter to which the President of the Board of Trade and, indeed, His Majesty's Government as a whole ought to give careful consideration. As I see it, looking to the future and with some experience of industrial problems in this country, unless we can come to a workable understanding with the United States after the war, I cannot see very much hope for the maintenance of the competitive power of this country in the markets of the world. The allocation


of trade between the two great communities, upon whatever system may be organised, remains to be seen, but unless we can have between the United States and ourselves some understanding based upon economic considerations, I fear that the productive enterprise of this country will suffer a very severe blow.
I cannot agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Seaham as to the part he says our export trade plays in political and economic life. It is of profound consequence to masses of workpeople in this country. Its restoration is the only means by which employment can be restored in a great many branches of industry. The hon. Member mentioned the city of Birmingham and its great variety of trades. How can we hope to restore employment in Birmingham after the conflict if we have not the opportunity to expand our export trade? My hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Higgs) will correct me if I am wrong when I say that we have 1,100 different trades in Birmingham, and I should say that 80 per cent. of them depend on the export trade. Birmingham is known over the world as a centre of industrial vitality. That vitality cannot be maintained after the war unless the policy of the Government is such as to give us a fair and reasonable opportunity of getting our share of whatever world markets may be available.
The President of the Board of Trade knows the difficulties which the export trade of this country has experienced in relation to the loss of our South American trade. I am President of the British and Latin-American Chamber of Commerce, and I know that we have suffered gravely in this country because of the restrictions which the Government have quite rightly had to place upon our export trade to South America. The South American Republics themselves have been only too anxious, within such limits as were available, to encourage any export trade that might possibly be carried on during the war. I want my right hon. Friend to think very carefully of how we are to restore the South American trade after the war. Investors in this country have developed in large measure the economic growth of the South American Republic. Railways, tramways, harbours, and all sorts of public utility services have been financed from this country and the in-

visible exports consequent upon that finance have been of great value to us. They have now disappeared, and it would be a serious matter for many great manufacturing industries in this country if we could not, at least to some extent, have a restoration of the trade that previously existed. I realise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Seaham pointed out, that an industrial civilisation exists in South America as it does in the Overseas Dominions and the Colonial Empire, and that this means a modification of the policy we previously pursued in our export trade with those countries. I attach great importance to the point made by my hon. Friend that we should buy from those who buy from us, and that should always be an abiding principle of the economic system of this country.
The Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department mentioned a remarkable fact when he spoke of the credits guaranteed by the Department during several years and the comparatively small loss that was sustained It is one of those facts which redound to the credit of the commercial community of this country, that when a Department of State guarantees the discharge of obligations amounting to £267,000,000, the loss is less than £1,000,000. Nothing could contribute more than that fact to the credit of British trading operations and to the credit of the people who carry on our trade. I should like to suggest to the President of the Board of Trade, who has been extremely kind about it, that he should do still more to get his Department into contact with various voluntary organisations which are working in this country for the development and expansion of our export trade. We have a whole series of them which are doing useful and helpful work. I am associated with most of them. An example was given in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey and Otley (Sir G. Gibson), who represents the Association of British Chambers of Commerce. Other hon. Members represent various organisations on the commercial and productive sides. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will take into his counsel as much as he can, such wisdom and experience as may be available in these various bodies.
The problems before the country related to our export trade are vast, various and


necessarily very obscure. I believe that no Minister has a more difficult task to face than the President of the Board of Trade in relation to the re-establishment of the commercial supremacy and quality of this country after the war, and the country looks to him as the Minister—generous, kindly and helpful as he is in every respect—to give that impetus to the consideration of the questions involved which is so essential if we are to develop any decent post-war policy in our export trade. What is asked all over the country now is, What is to be done after the war, particularly to restore the contacts we made in building up trade with the countries overseas? What kind of arrangements will be made between the newly industrialised communities and our industrial people here? All these serious problems are, no doubt, in the mind of my right hon. Friend and will be dealt with constructively and helpfully by his Department, but yet there is a feeling in the country that during the past few years sufficient thought has not been given to the post-war situation of our export trade. It is not to be treated by any means, as my right hon. Friend will be the first to admit, as a negligible consideration. It is something to which great masses of people look forward for the maintenance of their standards of living and their prospects of employment, and for keeping British products with their unrivalled quality and competitive character before the world for all future time. I am confident that in the difficult work before my right hon. Friend, he will have the full support of every branch of enterprise in this country, so long as enterprise is satisfied that his policy is calculated to make a brighter outlook for the economic life of the country.

Mr. Summers: Had more time been available I should have liked to have referred to some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell), but in the short time available I will do nothing to divert attention from the question of whether the Government are doing all that we can reasonably expect them to do to prepare for the expansion of exports after the war. I hoped that this Debate would indicate the extent to which the Government attach importance to this subject compared with other post-war problems, and indicate, too, the way in which they propose to discharge

their responsibilities. So far as the first object is concerned, I hope that the speech from the Minister is not to be taken as a criterion of the importance which the Government attach to this question. For the first 50 minutes of his speech the right hon. Gentleman dealt with the activities of his Department in the past. I should imagine that most Members, and certainly the country, are far more concerned with the activities of the Department as it affects the future. We learned that a number of committees have been appointed to discuss this, that and the other, and far from hoping that at an early date we should be given the benefit of their findings, he said that they were to be put at the disposal of the Minister without Portfolio. I hope it will not be long before we are allowed to learn the use to which it is proposed to put the recommendations of those committees.
Of the several contributions which can be made to this question of exports I regard that from the Government as unquestionably the most important. I shall take it for granted that, despite the mental gymnastics of the hon. Member for Sea-ham (Mr. Shinwell), there are good reasons for expanding British exports beyond what they were before the war, and if we are agreed upon the need for that expansion surely it is of less importance relatively, and therefore can be ignored for the moment, which are the good reasons each person wishes to adduce. The contributions from the Government must come partly from the Treasury and partly from the particular instrument, namely, the Board of Trade. We are indebted to the hon. Member for Walsall (Sir G. Schuster) for two extremely interesting and illuminating articles in "The Times" recently on the re-equipment of our industries to play their part in the development of exports after the war. This is not the occasion on which to develop the question of the use to which the weapon of taxation can be put to enable industrial plant to be modernised for that purpose. The occasion for that was taken not long ago on the Finance Bill, and I welcome the response which the Chancellor of the Exchequer then made to the point of view expressed, and I hope that he is pressing on with ways and means of assisting industry to equip itself to produce cheap and modern goods for the development of that trade. Again, there are the possibilities of an international clearing union. That can


play an important part in developing trade.
Turning to the particular instrument concerned primarily with this subject, the Board of Trade, it is difficult for one who has not been closely associated with the Department to avoid making from superficial knowledge a criticism which more knowledge might not make so well-founded. I venture to suggest that the setup is, to say the least of it, somewhat illogical. There is a Department which I understand is known as the Commercial Relations Department, primarily charged with the duty, in normal times, of course, of dealing with treaties between one country and another and the tariffs and modifications of tariffs which negotiations between countries might require. No doubt they are in close touch with the Department of Overseas Trade as such, but I cannot see the advantage of the segregation of those two Departments, on the ground that the Department concerned with day-to-day problems put to them by manufacturers should surely be the Department primarily concerned with negotiating treaties with other countries. By the same token, that section which is primarily concerned with treaties should be closely interlocked with the one dealing with the results of those treaties in practice.
We had a discussion in this House not long ago on the reform of the Civil Service. I venture to suggest that there is as much scope for refreshment, shall I say, in the personnel of the Department of Overseas Trade as in any other Department in which our civil servants operate. That is not intended as a reflection upon the status or integrity of civil servants. I have had much too close association with them to be led astray by ill-founded criticism of that kind, but I think there is scope for improving the services which they render to our manufacturers by bringing them in closer touch with people of business experience. It should be possible to interchange, possibly only for short periods, personnel in the Consular Service or in the offices of trade commissioners with people at home engaged in industry, and, by the same token, to exchange civil servants abroad with their opposite numbers at home. I do not know to what extent those at headquarters dealing with overseas trade have in fact spent any material part of their time abroad, but I should

have thought they would be able to bring a much better qualified point of view to their task if they had spent some years, at any rate, abroad.
This question will, it seems to me, be of no less importance after the war than the question during the war of maximum production for war purposes. That problem has been tackled in a variety of ways. It has been tackled through technical assistance, by building up joint production committees, and by interesting the worker in the use to which the products of his labour are put. Imagination has been shown, and very remarkable results have been achieved. I hope that in dealing with the post-war problem no less imagination will be shown. I have been particularly impressed with the effects of showing the worker to what use the products which he makes are put. Excellent results have followed visits from Service speakers. That particular system may not be possible everywhere in war-time, but I should have thought there was great scope for a Department such as the Overseas Trade Department, by the imaginative use of films, to interest the worker in what he is doing by showing him the use to which his goods are put abroad, and also in interesting foreign customers in the way the goods are made. In that way a complementary interest would be built up.
Next I would refer to the part which manufacturers and distributors can play, for things cannot be left solely to the Government if we are to get satisfactory results. I have a friend who, for some years, was in a merchant's office in Calcutta. He was telling me that for reasons which have not been vouchsafed to us the Indian chicken is smaller than the British chicken and lays a smaller egg, but for many years it was apparently quite impossible for those engaged in trade with India to impress upon British manufacturers that egg cups which were suitable for British eggs would not do for the eggs from Indian chickens, and that they would have to be adapted in order to make them fit. That is an illustration of a case where the manufacturer and the country ought not to be suffering through a lack of knowledge of what the consumer wants.
That brings me to one other point in connection with the Department. The reports sent home have been of interest. They have shown tonnages and other


statistics which manufacturers need, but the viewpoint has primarily been that of one taking a bird's-eye view of the country, noting trends and possible exchange rates which would be useful to anyone writing a general essay on the future of the country; but what they have not as yet been able to show is an approach to the problem of the consumer's mind. I hope there will be an increase in consumer-mindedness on the part of the staff of the Overseas Department, so that the intelligence service they provide will be that which is most required by the trading community who are anxious to make use of their services.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Dalton): I think the Debate, which was initiated by my right hon. Friend, has been of very considerable value, and I will undertake, in conjunction with him, that all the points which have been made and all the various suggestions which have been put forward by hon. Members shall be carefully considered. There have been stimulus and suggestion, sometimes a little contradictory, from different sections of the House, but I give an undertaking that the suggestions made shall all be carefully looked into, and we will seek to profit by them. There are three phases regarding export trade which it is convenient to remember. They are well known to the Committee. There was the phase of the export drive under my right hon. Friend, who is now the Minister of Supply, when he was President of the Board of Trade. That was before Lend-Lease, when it was necessary to export to the maximum in order to pay for the imports needful to carry on the war and to sustain our population. That phase closed shortly before I was appointed to the Board of Trade. When I became the President we were already in the second phase, the phase of Lend-Lease and of the restriction of exports made possible by Lend-Lease. Restriction of exports is a just and admitted policy, in order to strengthen to the utmost our short-term war effort over the next few years, while furnishing essential minimum supplies, and no more, for the home market and for those Empire markets particularly dependent upon us and for the requirements of our Allies, for example, Russia and the Middle East. In this phase we still stay. It is still necessary to restrict

exports very severely with these objects in view. I say that frankly to the Committee, and I do not think any hon. Member would differ from me. As my right hon. Friend sagely observed, this war might not necessarily have begun, but once begun it must some day end, and we are preparing—and it would be very wrong and we should be subject to criticism and rebuke if we were not—for the third phase when, after victory, we shall again expand our export trade with energy and vigour with the aid of the many organisations, which have special knowledge of these matters.
I do not need to debate at length whether we need to export. We all agree that for one reason or another we must do so. I am content to put it on the ground that my hon. Friend the Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) particularly emphasised. We must export, not merely as a national spoilt or as a luxury; we must export as a necessary operation, in order to procure in exchange very large quantities of food, which we either cannot produce here, or produce in sufficient quantities for our needs and to procure materials which are indispensable for the development of our various industries. Unless we export on a large scale—larger than before the war—we shall not get those necessary imports. Nor can I and other hon. Members, who represented depressed constituencies before the war, forget that, bad though unemployment was in the inter-war years, it was worse and most chronic in those areas which were dependent—unduly dependent—upon languishing export trades. Evidently, if we are to achieve full employment, it is necessary to have regard to stimulation of the economic life of those areas which were particularly dependent before the war upon exports and which cannot be suddenly switched round to cater only for the home market.
Therefore, I say at once, in response to an invitation from one of my hon. Friends, with precise deliberation, that the Government do attach very great importance indeed to preparing for the resumption of export in the third phase, when it opens. It has not opened yet, but, when it does, we are determined, with the help of the House of Commons and of industrial organisations, representing employers and labour, and with any other assistance that we can get, to


have our preparations ready and to give all the help that the Government can give. Our hope and our aim are to join with other nations and Governments in creating after the war what is commonly called an expansive world economy. We are pledged to that, and we mean it. It will be a very different thing from the economy we had between the wars, when every form of perverted ingenuity was used in order to produce a restrictive national and world economy. All over the world, masses of men were unemployed, and great quantities of plant were insufficiently used. Standards of life fell, and increasing paralysis spread over the scene.

Sir P. Hannon: Would not my right hon. Friend admit that it was a desperate time, when we were able by a restrictive economy to put a large number of people back into employment?

Mr. Dalton: I do not think that my hon. Friend and I really differ on this matter. That was not really my point. There were ups and clowns between the wars, and all sorts of desperate expedients were adopted. I do not want to get back into the old dreary Tariff Reform and Free Trade argument, and I am sure the House will agree. We are all agreed that between the wars things were pretty badly done throughout the civilised world. There were unemployment and lack of trade, channels were clogged instead of being open, and there was paralysis instead of life and vigour. At this stage, I am particularly anxious not to blame any person or group or policy. I am sure we all agree that that situation, with its miserable inter-war expedients, must not be repeated again, and we must lend all our efforts, good will and power of international co-operation to prevent it. What my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey and Otley (Sir Granville Gibson) said was quite right, when he pointed out that this is a matter for international consideration. I give the House an assurance that we are determined that the matter shall be considered internationally, not only with our Dominions, with whom we keep constantly in touch—I am myself frequently in touch with the Dominion representatives—and not only with the United States of America, but with all the representatives of the countries, our Allies, soon to be free, whose Governments are for the moment in exile here; and last, but by

no means least, with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
It is to our national interest that there should be this expansive economy and to the interest of the world as a whole. We are pledged to it by our signature to the Atlantic Charter and to the Mutual Aid Agreement with the United States. I believe that in an expansive world economy, if we can create it, there will be room for all. I believe that there will be room for trade conducted in some cases under a considerable degree of State direction, in other cases without much State direction, and in yet other cases quite free of State direction, particularly after we have passed through the immediate phase; and there will be room for all, if we make our arrangements aright for a world-wide prosperity, which will exploit the hitherto undreamed-of possibilities both in production and in consumption, in backward lands as well as in more civilised countries. I want to pass from generalities—

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Ian Fraser: I did not want to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, as I know his time is limited, but, in a sentence, will he define the meaning of "an expansive world economy"?

Mr. Dalton: An expansive economy is one in which standards of life expand instead of contracting, people get better off instead of worse off, in which there is regular employment and people get better wages as production expands. That is what we should all like to see, irrespective of other differences that may exist in this House.
I would like to touch upon one or two matters that have been raised in the course of the Debate, and also to say a word about Latin America. Several hon. Members have asked for assurances and undertakings with regard to the future of our exports to Latin America. I am prepared to say that we have good reason for being assured that the United States Administration, equally with our own Administration—

Mr. Levy: I was wondering whether the right hon. Gentleman would say something about the Most-Favoured-Nation Clause.

Mr. Dalton: There is a great deal to be said about the Most-Favoured-Nation Clause both pro and con. In the light of


the new situation it is evidently one of the topics that will have to come up in international discussions between our Dominion friends, the United States and European countries. I will not pursue that point further at the moment, because the time is not ripe for any declaration upon it. It has to be examined in relation to several other problems.
I wish to give an assurance that we do not intend to disinterest ourselves in Latin America and that nobody has suggested that we should. The United States of America in particular, equally with His Majesty's Government in this country, are determined that for the moment our resources and activities should be concentrated upon the primary task of winning the war and not in manoeuvring for some post-war advantage. For the moment, we and the United States Government are engaged on a joint adventure, in which combined planning of economic resources is developing, with a view to bringing victory as soon as we possibly can. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Production is engaged deeply in these matters. That is our immediate aim; but in the post-war period—and I have every reason to believe that the United States Government share our view—the United Kingdom must participate in the expansion of trade in Latin America as elsewhere.
In Latin America there are enormous possibilities of expansion. In reply further to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) I would say that there are great possibilities of an expansive economy there. You have States with enormous natural resources and relatively small populations and with relatively undeveloped transport systems. Therefore it is surely possible to look forward to a tremendous expansion of the production of primary products and some industrialisation, which will undoubtedly be in terms of the less highly-priced goods. We hope still to be able, in the new conditions which will follow the industrialisation of, for example, Brazil, to have a very substantial trade in which we supply the high quality goods and she gives us her goods.

Mr. Shinwell: Such as coffee?

Mr. Dalton: Yes, such as coffee, but I hope, in the interests of Brazil herself, it

would not be exclusively coffee. This point illustrates one of the arguments of the hon. Gentleman as to the purpose of our export trade. We must have coffee from other countries, because coffee grown in this country would, I expect, have an evil taste and cost too much. I expect it would have to be grown under glass. If there is any doubt in the mind of any section of the Latin-American community, or of British traders, as to the continued interest of His Majesty's Government in the Latin-American markets as a legitimate and proper post-war field, I hope I have been able, by these words, to remove it. I do not believe that any Government in any part of the Americas, or any part of the world, would deny that we have a proper and legitimate right to trade in Latin America after the war, and to take part with others in the expansion we hope for in that great trading area. We are bound to Latin America by many friendly ties and mutual interests, and these, I hope, will be strengthened in the future.
May I now turn to the U.K.C.C.? Several Members have mentioned it, and I would like to take the opportunity of saying a word or two about it and in praise of it. The U.K.C.C. was formed in April, 1940, just before the change of Government which took place at Whitsun, 1940. I may illustrate its formation personally, because I was concerned with it when I was Minister of Economic Warfare. One of the first things I had to do when I became Minister of Economic Warfare was to go to the present Chancellor of the Exchequer and ask him for a substantial sum of money to put the U.K.C.C. on its feet, and I succeeded in persuading him. We were chiefly desirous at that time, and I went as Minister of Economic Warfare, of pre-empting quantities of goods in Turkey and the Balkans, in order to keep them out of the hands of the enemy—certain metals in particular, chrome and so forth, which were of high importance both to strengthening our war effort and weakening the enemy's.
In those first stages the U.K.C.C. was principally what we call a pre-emptive purchasing organisation. It was brought into existence with that primary object in view, and it did that very well in the period before the armies of the enemy overran the countries of South-Eastern Europe. Gradually it developed its functions, and it was found necessary, in


order to make pre-emptive purchasing successful, that we should not only buy from these people but be prepared to sell to them things they wanted; otherwise they were reluctant to let us rather than the enemy have the goods. Therefore, the U.K.C.C. developed a two-way traffic. It organised sales from this country as well as purchases to this country, and these have grown. The U.K.C.C. has been very active in Spain and Portugal, and it has been still more active, in the aggregate of its operations, in the Middle East. The Middle East Supply Centre, as it is called, is very dependent on the U.K.C.C. for its operations in all the countries of the Middle East. We have also used the U.K.C.C. as the medium for all the British non-military supplies to Russia, whether by the Northern route or by the Persian route.
The U.K.C.C. is entirely financed by public money. There are no private shareholders; no rent, profit or interest derive from its operation. It is financed by the Treasury—[interruption.] I hope that will riot turn any hon. Members against this most valuable instrument in the war effort. In all, the Treasury has put, and I think rightly and properly, several million pounds into the work of the U.K.C.C. The U.K.C.C. has not got, as has sometimes been suggested, a monopoly of trade. This has been particularly suggested as being the case within the field of operation of the Middle East Supply Centre. It has not got a monopoly of trade. It does not determine what shall be shipped, but acts on the recommendation of the various authorities—the civil and the military authorities in these areas. It acts on their recommendations as to what is urgently required in those countries to sustain the civil and economic life of the populations, and it canalises trade in a manner which the authorities in those countries find exceedingly convenient in war-time, and does it extremely efficiently. I repeat that in regard to the despatch of supplies to Russia of material over the Persian route, which is now able to be used continuously throughout the year, and on an increasing scale, it has been performing most valuable work. What will come after the war cannot be exactly foretold. I have already said, in reply to a Question in the House, that I certainly would give no undertaking at all that the U.K.C.C. should close down. It has been

extremely valuable during the war. I can well believe that in certain directions it may be extremely valuable after the peace. It will be for the Government, and Parliament, as supervising the Government, to decide in the light of circumstances then prevailing whether it should expand after the war or should in some respects be restricted in its functions. I desire to pay my tribute to those responsible for the conduct of the U.K.C.C. It has been an exceedingly well-run show, and we could not have carried forward our war effort so successfully without it.
Now, taking points rather out of order so that I shall not miss matters raised by hon. Members, may I reply to another point raised by the hon. Baronet the Member for Moseley (Sir P. Hannon)? It was very kind of him to speak of me in the way he did. Anyone who helps me by coming with suggestions or information to the Board of Trade I shall always be grateful to and will endeavour to co-operate fully with. He asked me about Anglo-United States contacts and understanding. There is a very great deal of contact, as he will appreciate, on the governmental and official levels. I need not develop that. We are all looking forward very much to the visit of Mr. Eric Johnston, the President of the United States Chamber of Commerce, who is arriving here next week. We welcome that very much. His Majesty's Government are very glad that he is coming. I am sure it will be valuable for him to hear what we are thinking over here and for us to hear what they over there are thinking. That is typical of the sort of interchange visit which I think is very helpful. It is by no means the only one.
The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Summers) made some observations about what he calls the set-up of the Board of Trade, and it may indeed, like a lot of British arrangements, look a bit illogical. None the less it may not be too bad as compared with more logical plans. There is a Commercial Relations and Treaties Department at the Board of Trade, concerned primarily with all external economic relationships, which we at the Board of Trade have to consider. Several officials there—I mention this to show that I agree with the hon. Member—have moved about since I became President of the Board of Trade. Some have arrived and some have gone elsewhere.


and so on. I entirely agree that one does want a fairly frequent degree of movement, though not so frequent as to be disorganising. I have attempted, while I have been President of the Board of Trade, to see that there is a reasonable mobility of people back and forwards. That applies both as between different jobs in this country and tasks in this country and tasks overseas. At the moment, with so many countries overrun, it is not easy to provide the overseas experience which could have been arranged in peace-time. Particularly in connection with reform of the Foreign Service, which was debated in the House some time ago, I hope there will be scope there for a great improvement in the Consular and Commercial Diplomatic Services. This has all been very much in the mind of the Government, and I have discussed it at some length with my right hon. Friend, who is sitting beside me and who is naturally deeply concerned in it, and with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and others. My right hon. Friend the Secretary to the Department of Overseas Trade has, of course, a relationship to both the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office, which, I think, is generally appreciated in the House. His name figures on both the Foreign Office list and the list of the Board of Trade. That is not logical: it is a compromise arising out of a quarrel long ago between predecessors of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and myself as to which should control overseas trade. The President of the Board of Trade said that, because it was trade, it should be under the Board of Trade, and the Foreign Secretary said that, because it was overseas, it should be under his Department. My right hon. Friend here is the compromise, and that compromise does not work too badly.
A number of other questions were put; perhaps I ought to be excused from answering those of hon. Members who are no longer present. My hon. Friend the Member for Seaham spoke of the collection of the reports, to which my right hon. Friend has referred, as being orthodox. I am sure that he will agree that we must have as many facts and particulars as we can. It is no good planning, for example, to export an enormous number of bicycles to Ruritania without ascertaining in advance that the

Ruritanians are likely to want them and that the country is not so mountainous that the bicycles will have to be wheeled more often than ridden.

Mr. Shinwell: I hope that the despatch of bicycles to Ruritania is not part of Government policy.

Mr. Dalton: It might be, and it might not. I am giving an illustration. We must know what the people want. The use of films has been referred to in reinforcement of other methods. That is the purpose of the study which is being carried on under my right hon. Friend into the prospects we have in markets all over the world in the immediate post-war period. I agree that there is no immediate risk after the war of a slump in trade. The problem will be to control the boom, and to prevent it getting out of hand. That can be done easily by keeping on the present controls. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has explained this to the House, and I have endeavoured to do so in a previous Debate. We shall, after the war, have to stimulate and direct our export trade to a considerable extent, having regard to the economic situation at the time. We shall have three great sources of demand for our goods. There will be a tremendous demand in the home market with all the pent-up purchasing power, including War Savings, Service gratuities and post-war credits. That pent-up purchasing power cannot be allowed to break loose in an inflationary flood. We must direct abroad certain products, which might otherwise be absorbed by the home market, In doing so, we must distinguish between the ordinary commercial exports and the relief exports, which, at any rate for a time, this country will wish to make, and be under an obligation to make, possibly on a Lend-Lease basis, in order to relieve the misery caused by the German barbarians and the Japanese barbarians in the overrun territories. We have to balance the claims of the home market, the commercial exports and the relief exports against each other. We cannot give priority for any one; we must go as far as we can to meet them all, within the framework of our commercial control. I have great confidence, based on talks I have had at the Board of Trade with representatives of the employers and of the trade unions, that we


can surmount the difficulties. I thank the House for the stimulus it has imparted to us in dealing with the problems of overseas trade, and I can assure hon. Members that my right hon. Friend and I will not be backward in taking advantage of all helpful suggestions.
Question, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution," put, and agreed to.

It being the hour appointed under Paragraph (7) of Standing Order No. 14, Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to that Standing Order, to put forthwith the Questions, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolutions reported in respect of Classes I to X of the Civil Estimates, the Revenue Departments Estimates, the Civil Excess Vote, 1941, the Navy Estimates, the Army Estimates and the Air Estimates."

CIVIL ESTIMATES AND SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1943

CLASS I

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT AND FINANCE

Question,
That this House cloth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of Class I of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS II

FOREIGN AND IMPERIAL

Question,
That this House cloth agree with the Commit tee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of Class II of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS III

HOME DEPARTMENT, LAW AND JUSTICE

Question,
That this House cloth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of Class III of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS IV

EDUCATION AND BROADCASTING

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of Class IV of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS V

HEALTH, LABOUR AND INSURANCE

Question,
That this House cloth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolutions reported in respect of Class V of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS VI

TRADE, INDUSTRY AND TRANSPORT

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of Class VI of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS VII

COMMON SERVICES (WORKS, STATIONERY, & C.)

Question,
That this House cloth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolutions reported in respect of Class VII of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS VIII

NON-EFFECTIVE CHARGES (PENSIONS)

Question,
That this House cloth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of Class VIII of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS IX

EXCHEQUER CONTRIBUTIONS TO LOCAL REVENUES

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of Class IX of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CLASS X

WAR SERVICES

Question,
That this House cloth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolutions reported in respect of Class X of the Civil Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1943

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of the Revenue Departments Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

CIVIL EXCESS, 1941

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of the Civil Excess, 1941,
put, and agreed to.

NAVY ESTIMATES, 1943

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of the Navy Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

ARMY ESTIMATES, 1943

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of the Army Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

AIR ESTIMATES, 1943

Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the outstanding Resolution reported in respect of the Air Estimates,
put, and agreed to.

WAYS AND MEANS [23rd July]

Resolutions reported

1. "That, towards making good the Supply granted to His Majesty for the service of the year ended on the 31st day of March, 1942, the sum of £10 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom."
2 "That, towards making good the Supply granted to His Majesty for the service of the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1944, the sum of £1,368,610,336 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom."

Resolutions agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said Resolutions by the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Assheton.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (APPROPRIATION) BILL

"to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending on the thirty-first day of March, one thousand nine hundred and forty-two and one thousand nine hundred and forty-four, and to appropriate the supplies granted in this Session of Parliament "; presented accordingly, and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon the next Sitting Day, and to be printed—[Bill 55].

Orders of the Day — HYDRO-ELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order read for consideration of Lords Amendments.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Lords Amendments be now considered" [Mr. T. Johnston.] put, and agreed to.

Lords Amendments considered accordingly.

CLAUSE 4.—(Development scheme.)

Lords Amendment

In page 3, line 9, leave out from "practicable" to the end of the Subsection, and insert:

"the water power resources which the Board propose to examine with a view to their possible use for the purpose of generating electricity."

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. T. Johnston): I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
The Amendment deals with Clause 4, which provdies for a development scheme. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate said during the proceedings in this House, the Government never attached any great importance to the development scheme stage. A development scheme stage, as he said on 5th May in this House, was only a preliminary stage, and the Bill ought not therefore to have provided for so precise a scheme as we outlined in Clause 4 as it left this House. When the Clause went to another place it was pointed out to us—as indeed it had been pointed out here as well—that a development scheme which provided for a specification not only of the water power resources proposed to be utilised, but the situation of the works, including generating stations, and main transmission lines which were proposed to be constructed for the purpose of utilising these resources, might have tied our hands at a later stage if once we had approved of this development scheme. Therefore, in another place on behalf of the Government, Lord Alness moved that instead of the Clause as it left this House we should insert the words:
the water power resources which the Board propose to examine with a view to their possible use for the purpose of generating electricity.
The Amendment, which was moved on behalf of the Government and carried unani-


mously in another place, has been inserted for the purpose of making it abundantly clear that the development scheme stage provided for in this Bill is not to be a precise description stage but a mere general survey, and the later constructional scheme stages are the occasions when hon. Members of this House, the Electricity Commissioners and the Secretary of State for Scotland will have adequate and abundant opportunity of going into the details of any scheme.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I suppose it is almost a forlorn hope to fancy that anything I can say is likely to cause us to reject this Amendment, but I ask the House to recognise precisely what they are doing in accepting it. I hope that my hon. Friends realise the nature of the change which has taken place, and they will perhaps do me the courtesy of recalling my views previously. When the Bill was before the House on the Committee stage, the Lord Advocate, in reply to a question from me, defined what he thought was the point and purpose of the development scheme in Clause 4. As I heard him talk then, I was obliged to intervene with this question, "What is the point of a development scheme at all? What value is it to the Government?" The right hon. Gentleman replied, indicating that he did not think that it was of great moment, but I would ask the House to remember the other words which he then used, which showed that the Government had a very important purpose in mind when they stuck to this development scheme, which I sought to abolish in order to combine Clauses 4 and 5 and therefore the development a-ad constructional schemes. The Lord Advocate said it was true that it was intended to be a preliminary survey, but it did two things. He did not specify the two; I think he had forgotten the second point. At any rate, he specified one of these two things. He said that the point of the Clause and the development scheme was that—
it would give us an authoritative picture of the possibilities of future development,"—
and I think therefore it is useless.

Mr. Johnston: An authoritative picture in broad outline.

Mr. Stewart: Those were his words. In view of the statement of the Government then, I did not press the matter. When it

came to the Debate in another place I found that Lord Alness took an entirely different view of the meaning of these development schemes, He there explained that the development scheme, after the Amendment proposed, would be nothing more than the outline of electrical possibilities which it was the intention of the Board subsequently to examine. How different from the statement of the Lord Advocate that here was to be an authoritative picture of future developments. The two things are not in any way comparable. To what is it that this House is now asked to agree? I hope that the House will look at the Clause as it is now to be amended and see the absurd situation into which we are being introduced. If the Amendment is accepted, this is how Clause 4 will read:
It shall be the duty of the Board as soon as may be after their appointment to prepared a general scheme for the exercise of their powers and duties … showing,"—
note the first condition—
so far as practicable,—
the water power resources which the board propose to examine"—
some time in the far distant future—
with a view to their possible use.
If the House thinks that that means anything, I confess I am not in its company. I cannot make sense, practical or otherwise, out of this Amendment. It has made the Clause absolutely unnecessary and futile. Having got this indication of
the water power resources which the Board propose to examine with a view to their possible use,
it is now still to be called the scheme. The thing is absurd. How can it be a scheme when it is an indication that on this or that day we may "as far as possible" or "so far as practicable" perhaps look at it? That is called a scheme. Let the House recall the course that this so-called scheme has to go through. Let it consider all the authoritative stages, examinations, considerations and approvals that have to be followed by this so-called scheme when it is prepared. First of all, this so-called scheme has to be submitted to the Electricity Commissioners for their approval. Just imagine it. The Electricity Commissioners are to sit down solemnly to look at a piece of paper on which there are half a dozen words saying, "Possibly, in the future, so far as is practicable, we may, in our judgment, perhaps look at certain things which


may one day become a scheme." The Commissioners must sit down for hours considering this monstrous proposition, and when they have in their wisdom decided that it is a very sound idea, it is then submitted to the Minister and his officials. They likewise have to sit down and consider these words— "possibly, in the future, so far as is practicable we may one day perhaps look at certain things." Then it is published, and the House has noticed the formalities which must be observed. It has to go to certain newspapers, through a whole rigmarole, This is asking the House to accept an absurdity. The Government should have said, as I have said in this House, that a development scheme is valueless and that what matters is a real five-year plan. The whole Clause ought to be altered. I feel it is impossible to accept the Amendment.
Question, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment," put, and agreed to.

CLAUSE 5.—(Constructional schemes.)

Lords Amendment: In page 30, leave out, "giving affect to," and insert:
the generation of electricity from any of the water power resources specified in".

Mr. Johnston: I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This Amendment is consequential upon the one we have just accepted, but in response to an interjection by an hon. Member about no reply being given to that one, perhaps I might be permitted to say a few words on this one. I am sure the House would have accepted the reasoning of the hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) with a little more avidity if he had not so extravagantly expressed it and had not so obviously forgotten the background of this Bill, which is to provide that the main recommendations of the Cooper Committee should be accepted. The hon. Member repeated the proposal for a five-year plan. That, however, was not accepted. The House took the view that every constructional scheme should be brought before both Houses of Parliament, which should be given the option of turning down each separate constructional scheme. The hon. Member for East Fife took the view that we ought not to have these separate schemes before us; he is entitled to take the view that

there is one five-year plan, but that is not the view which the Government or hon. Members in all parts of the House have taken. We have to guard jealously the rights of Parliament in controlling these schemes, and we have to take every possible step we can to ensure that no board shall be given Fascist powers.

Sir Joseph Lamb: They are here now.

Mr. Johnston: No, every constructional scheme under this Bill is being laid before this House at the instigation of the Government, whereas the proposal we have repeatedly resisted is a proposal for a five-year plan. It is a major matter of principle which has been argued and decided time and time again in this House.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: The right hon. Gentleman has not said anything about Clause 4, the development scheme, in his remarks.

Mr. Johnston: I talked about nothing else. The last Amendment was to Clause 4. This Amendment is consequential and, therefore, the argument I was seeking to use on this Amendment was one I could have used on the previous Amendment. I only adduced it in view of an interjection that there was no reply to the previous Amendment.

Question put, and agreed to.

CLAUSE 9.—(Amenity Committee and Fisheries Committee.)

Lords' Amendment: In page 7, line 9, leave out from, "In," to the first "the" in line II, and insert "the exercise of their functions."

Mr. Johnston: I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
If hon. Members turn to Clause 9 of the Bill they will see that the Clause, as a result of this and the following Amendment, would provide that in the exercise of their functions the Board shall have regard to the desirability of preserving the beauty of the scenery and any object of architectural or historic interest. The words of this and the following Amendment have been inserted, and I think rightly, as an additional protection to historic and architectural beauties in Scotland. As the Clause left this House it did not provide for anything more than the beauty of the scenery. We now propose to accept the Lords' Amendments


providing that in addition to that any object of architectural or historic interest shall be protected.

Question put, and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords Amendment in page 7, line 12, agreed to.

CLAUSE 22.—(Control of new private generating stations.)

Lords Amendment: In page 15, line 20, at the end, insert:
Provided that the Electricity Commissioners shall not refuse their consent to the establishment or extension of any such station if they are satisfied that such establishment or extension would not prejudice the exercise or performance by the Board of their powers or duties regarding the development of further means of generation of electricity by water power.

Mr. Johnston: I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
I think this Amendment will commend itself to Members in all parts of the House. Clause 22 provides that there should be control of private generating stations, that no person shall be allowed to operate by water power a private generating station having a plant exceeding 50 kilowatt power. That was the Clause as it left this House, and what is added here are the words of the Amendment. It may be held that these words are implicit in the Clause as it stood, but it is desirable that they should be made more emphatic. That is to say, the Commissioners shall not refuse their consent unless they are satisfied that the new scheme will interfere with another hydro-electric scheme, say, further down a valley. We do not want wantonly or foolishly to interfere with generation by private individuals who may wish to put up a station. We think the Bill is already clear but we have no objection to accepting these words.

Question put, and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — NURSES (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order read for consideration of Lords Amendments.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Lords Amendments be now considered [Mr. T. Johnston.] put, and agreed to.

Lords Amendments considered accordingly.

CLAUSE 2.—(Rules.)

Lords Amendment: In page 2, line 21, leave out "either."

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. T. Johnston): I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
We have not now sufficient training facilities for the training of nurses. Existing facilities are, by common consent, insufficient. We are 700 trained nurses short of requirements and 600 assistant nurses short of requirements. The Amendment, which was accepted by the Government in another place, makes some little contribution to training facilities. There are seven base hospitals under the emergency scheme owned and staffed by the Government and it is desired that, as far as possible, they should be put in a position to afford training facilities in addition to those already provided by voluntary and local authority hospitals. For so long as they are there, we think it desirable that the extra facilities that they can provide, should be afforded for developing the number of nurses so badly wanted.

Mr. Kirkwood: Are you doing your best to retain them?

Mr. Johnston: Undoubtedly. I understand that it is apprehended in some quarters that these State hospitals will not be subject to General Nursing Council Regulations. It is true that the form in which the Amendment has to be moved appears to provide that these State hospitals will be in the same position as service hospitals, and therefore excluded from the control of the General Nursing Council, but on the day that we decided to accept this Amendment this letter was sent to the Registrar General of the Nursing Council on my instructions:
The Secretary of State wishes me to assure the Council that, in the event of it being decided to provide training facilities at any of the Department's hospitals, he would welcome inspection of the hospitals on behalf of the Council in the usual way and would comply with the Council's requirements on a voluntary basis
In other words, the regulations and provisions which are made in other hospitals for the training of nurses will be gladly accepted in our State hospitals as well. There is, therefore, no fear whatever that we are trying to add to the number of training facilities outside the control of the General Nursing Council. On the con-


trary, I hope we shall have the assistance of the Council and of voluntary and local authority hospitals in one general comprehensive co-operative scheme for the training of large numbers of nurses. We have at the moment a considerable number of student nurses' applications but we have not training facilities for them. I have already had meetings with the voluntary hospital authorities and our State hospital directors and I have endeavoured to get a co-operative scheme by which nurses partially trained in our hospitals for three months move to other hospitals later on for other training, and I hope that by that means we shall augment the training facilities. I am sure that some of the misapprehensions which have been raised are quite without foundation and I trust the House will support us in every effort that we make to augment training facilities in these difficult times.

Commander Galbraith: The Secretary of State is giving an assurance that the training of nurses, no matter in which institutions they are trained, will come under the direction of the General Nursing Council and that the same standards will apply?

Mr. Johnston: Not quite. It applies to all the training facilities under the Bill, but Air Force facilities and so on do not come within it. With that proviso the hon. and gallant Gentleman is correct.
Question, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment," put, and agreed to.
Lords Amendment in page 2, line 23, agreed to.
Lords Amendment: In page 2, line 32, leave out "sixth day of May, nineteen hundred and forty-three "and insert "passing of this Act."

Mr. Johnston: I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is a formal proposal to change the date. It gives us a little longer period in which we can bring nurses in under the facilities provided in the Bill.

Question put, and agreed to.

Remaining Lords Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — WAYS AND MEANS [22nd July]

COAL (MINERAL RIGHTS DUTY)

Resolution reported:
That for the purpose of any Act of the present Session to amend the Coal Act, 1938, it is expedient to authorise the treatment, for the purpose of mineral rights duty—

(i) of the lessee for the time being under any lease granted under Section thirteen of the said Act of 1938 as amended by the first-mentioned Act; and
(ii) of any person, who, during any period between the date of the commencement of the term granted by any such lease as aforesaid and the date of the granting of the lease, has worked or works coal comprised in the lease under a licence granted by the Coal Commission;

as the proprietor and not as a lessee of the premises demised by the lease.

Resolution agreed to.

COAL BILL [Lords]

Considered in Committee.

[MAJOR MILNER in the Chair]

Clauses 1 and 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

CLAUSE 3.—(Leases to former freeholders.)

Amendment made: In page 3, line 24, after "of", insert "mineral rights duty and."—[Major Lloyd George.]

The Attorney-General (Sir Donald Somervell): I beg to move, in page 4, to leave out lines 8 and 9, and to insert:
(3) Where a freeholder's lease is granted, the amount payable as consideration therefor under paragraph (a) of Sub-section (1) of this Section shall be deemed to have been payable at the date of the commencement of the term granted by the lease, and shall carry interest from that date to the date of payment at the same rate as compensation under Section six of the principal Act.
This Amendment corrects a small slip in the original Bill which arose in these circumstances. When compensation or payment on account of compensation was made as from the vesting date, it carried interest at £3 per cent. If, therefore, one assumes that a payment on account is being made to a freeholder of £206, £200 goes to him as capital and £6 goes to him as interest. At present rates he will get only £3 because Income Tax will be deducted. If he decides to take a pepper-


corn lease under this Clause, he has to repay what he has received, but it is right and proper that when he has to repay the £206, he should repay £200 as capital and the balance as interest. On that basis he will deduct the Income Tax from the £6 and pay back the £3, which is all he has had, and the transaction will be as if it had never happened. At the moment there is no provision entitling him, when he repays, to treat as interest for purposes of repayment what he has received as interest. That is obviously unfair and this Amendment puts it right.

Mr. Tinker: The Attorney-General has tried to explain what it means, but I must confess that I am not clear about it.

The Attorney-General: Can I try again? Clause 3 provides that a freeholder may give a notice and get a peppercorn lease on the basis that he repays, in compensation, which he may already have received and gives up his right to any compensation which he has not so far received. The compensation is payable as from the vesting date and carried interest from that date. Suppose I am a freeholder and I receive, two years after the vesting date, a payment on account. That will be made to me as to say £200 for capital and as to £6 for interest. In paying that sum the Commission would, according to ordinary principles, deduct the Income Tax from that part of the payment which was interest. Therefore, all I should get would be £203. This Clause provides that I have to repay what I have received. If we did not make this Amendment the Clause might be construed as meaning that I had to pay £206, which was the gross amount due to me. Six pounds of this sum is interest and I should be entitled to do what the Commission did when paying me, namely, deduct Income Tax. This Amendment puts that right by saying that when a man who has received a sum in part capital and in part interest, is called upon to repay, he will repay the sum in part capital and in part interest on the same basis as he received it.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 6 to 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

CLAUSE 10.—(Withdrawal of support where notice of approach required by retained lease.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

Mr. James Griffiths (Llanelly): On the Second Reading of the Bill many of my hon. Friends and I raised a question on this Clause because it involved an important principle. Here, for the first time, we have admitted a principle which in normal days we from these benches sought to get the House to accept when Royalties were in the ownership of the royalty owners. That was that there should be compensation where there was damage to property because of withdrawal of support. There were many cases of poor owner-occupiers whose life's savings were often in their houses, which had been completely destroyed or rendered valueless by the effects of subsidence. Just before the war we endeavoured to carry a Bill, but it was badly mutilated in another place and the war prevented further progress.
The principle of payment of compensation is conceded to a particular class in this Clause, to those people who, prior to the Coal Mines Act, 1938, were the owners of the land and the coal. Now the coal has become the property of, and is in the ownership of, the nation. Where the State decides that it will work coal which under the old lease had been reserved and there is a subsidence, the payment of compensation in principle is accepted. We raised the matter because we thought that here was a payment of compensation to people who could best afford to stand any loss and to repair any damage, whereas for years the House had steadfastly refused to admit compensation to people to whom such damage meant the loss of their life's savings. The people who owned the land and the coal are not poor and do not work in the ordinary sense for their living, and they can stand the loss better. We were perturbed that the first people to whom the Government concede this principle, which has been agitated for in this House so long, should be the favoured people.
I would ask the Minister whether he can give any information on what the Coal Commission propose to do about the general problem, now that the principle has been conceded in this Clause. By


admitting the principle of compensation in this Cause, the Coal Commission, the Mines Department and the Government have thrown away any case they had for resisting the other claim. Could the Minister indicate whether the Coal Commission propose to give any real consideration to all that is involved in the problem of withdrawals of support and the subsidence and damage which arise there-from?

Mr. David Adams: I am asked by my local authority, which is concerned with a mining area that has suffered very greatly from subsidence, to urge that the Commission should take the whole matter into consideration and see whether the time has not arrived for general compensation to be paid, quite apart from private' arrangements, to all and sundry who may suffer through mine-working. The mining industry is, probably, the only industry of any standing that may, in its working, injure the property of local authorities, private corporations and private individuals without the sufferers having any possibility of redress. The State is now the owner of the mining royalties and still receives, as the old royalty owners did, something from 2d. to is. per ton, or, on an average, something like 8½d. per ton upon all coal drawn. Therefore the State would be in an excellent position to make a financial contribution towards paying compensation. A penny per ton on the coal drawn to-day would amount to almost £1,,000,000 per annum, and out of the 8½d. per ton which the State collects there would still be considerable sums left for other purposes. That the industry has carefully safeguarded itself against doing the correct thing towards the rest of the community is well illustrated by a Section in the Sewers Act, 1883, which states:
Nothing in such sanitary Act shall be deemed to have subjected or to subject any such person to any liability to the local authority in respect of damage to a sanitary work consequent upon the working of any mine in a reasonable or proper manner.
The remedy of the local authorities was, apparently, that they could purchase large areas of coal in order to protect themselves against the possibility of subsidence affecting any of their properties or buildings. The damage done is extraordinarily high in mining areas and adds very substantially to local rating burdens. It is

perfectly true to say that the amount of money which is raised by a penny rate in many districts is exceeded some five, six, or seven times—and in a particular case to times—by the expenditure which falls upon the ratepayers as a result of subsidence. We say that the Commission ought to take the whole matter into consideration to see whether the time has not arrived when this undue hardship, which penalises large numbers of persons throughout the country, and involves damage amounting to many hundreds of thousands of pounds, should be dealt with. I ask, therefore, as requested from the Consett area, that the Commission will take the whole matter into consideration.

Sir Joseph Lamb: This Clause does admit the principle of compensation, but unfortunately limits the application of that principle, and I join in the hope which has been expressed that the Minister will give an indication that at a not too distant date he will consider applying the principle on a very much wider scale. Many of us come from areas where great loss has fallen not only upon those who are thought, sometimes perhaps erroneously, to be in a position to stand loss, but upon people who by great effort and strivings have saved money to purchase their own houses, only to find that all the results of their efforts have been lost on account of subsidences and that they have no compensation.

Mr. McLean Watson (Dunfermline): On every conceivable occasion I have appealed to different Secretaries for Mines on this subject of subsidence, and I now make an appeal to the Minister of Fuel and Power. I represent a constituency, part of which has suffered terribly from this scourge. In one borough there is not a single street in which buildings have not been ruined by underground workings. Some time ago a Royal Commission inquired into this matter and, if I remember correctly, recommended that the owners of houses under a certain rental should be compensated, the figure, I believe, being £40 a year. By this Clause only a privileged section are to get compensation and protection against subsidence. I join with those who have already spoken in appealing to the Minister to consider compensation not only for that particular class but for other private and public owners.


Since the last war council houses have been built. In the burgh of Cowdenbeath we have had new council houses wrecked by underground workings, and because the ground landlords and the colliery companies were wary enough to protect themselves against claims for damage caused by underground workings not a penny of compensation can be claimed either from the colliery companies or those who previously owned the mining royalties.
It will be understood that I am pretty keenly interested in this question, and I would urge the Minister to hold out some hope to those who have lost valuable property. As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) has said, the workers have saved their money in the past and put it into house property in order to get a house that was not tied to a colliery. They wanted to be free from the influence of the colliery company, wanted to be able to move about from colliery to colliery as they liked, by having a house of their own. In addition to their own house they may have built one or two other houses, putting into them the savings of a lifetime, and now everything has gone.
I hate to have to refer to personal or private matters but I might say that my own family has suffered as a result of this kind of subsidence. A fine little cottage was wiped out in a single night as a result of underground working. Much of the property affected would never have been built by private individuals if they could have foreseen what was to happen, but, at the time they built, mining was carried on in a sensible sort of way. The ground gradually subsided, settling down with little or no damage to property on the surface. During the past 20 years new ideas have been applied to mining, such as the long wall system, and great stretches of coal face have been speedily worked by machinery. In order to save timber and steel, props have been drawn regularly night after night, with the result that instead of the ground gradually subsiding, there have been sudden collapses. If any of those workings were near property, the damage to the property was very serious indeed. In parts of the burgh to which I have referred, you would think there had been an air raid. It was like that before the war began because of underground working. There has not been a penny of compensation, because those who worked the coal took good care

to protect themselves by having a clause inserted in the legal documents.
In addition to the damage done to private property, there is the damage done to property belonging to the local authorities. We have had to renew water pipes, gas mains, and other services almost yearly because of the damage which is continually being done by underground workings. One result has been high local rates. Everybody has suffered, except the colliery companies. They have been making from 20 to 50 per cent, dividends on their undertakings and have got away with the swag, whilst private individuals and public bodies have had to suffer. In view of the fact that the Minister is asking us to agree to a certain section of the community being compensated for damage done by underground workings, I hope he will take into consideration the poorer sections of the community.
We want to see the coal worked, but we do not want to see damage done in the future. I am not sure what may develop out of the great plans that have been prepared for the future. In my area one great colliery has been put down, but no houses have yet been built there. I think the intention is to keep the houses far from the colliery. If a new colliery village is erected near the colliery, inevitably the new buildings will soon be ruined as a result of the underground workings. I hope that the Minister will widen the scope of this Clause which proposes to give compensation to a section of the community who may not suffer in the future as much as many others have done in the past. I hope we shall have a much better Clause and that another attempt will be made by the Minister to give reasonable compensation for damage that is done by this system of working.

Mr. Tinker: This Clause is interesting. As I follow it, it seems to mean that where, before the royalty was taken by the State, an understanding was given for the protection of a particular section of coal, the royalties must still carry on, in that case. It does not seem to extend as far as we expected, or to cover the kind of case just outlined by my hon. Friend. Every village adjacent to a coalmine is sinking down, and we ask whether there is any power to get compensation from the coalowners or the royalty owners. Is there any way by


which the damage and the loss to property owners can be recovered? My attention is constantly being drawn to cases of this kind. House owners have asked me whether there was any chance of recovering compensation for damage, but I have found that there was no chance. The property owners had built their houses without any protection at all and they have had to stand the loss. Is there no possibility of an Amendment to the present law in order to deal with that situation? While we are dealing with coal, could we not take some steps to protect the rights of people living in such cottages, or to protect people who may subsequently build on land which is likely to give way?
I would like to get from the Minister an assurance, even though this Bill does not now cover the ground that we want, that this ground will be covered. Does the Bill go further than we think it does? Does it cover any of the cases mentioned by my hon. Friend? Will there be any possibility of covering damage where a person buys a house which becomes damaged in this way? Is anything to be got from the Royalty Fund? Those are points which we ought to have cleared up so that we can tell our people what the Bill means and whether it is possible to recover anything. If the Minister will do that, he will be giving great help to us, enabling us to understand what is meant by Clause 10.

Mr. Sloan: At the risk of repetition I would like to join my friends in their appeal to the Minister to see whether anything can be inserted in this Bill to meet the case they have stated. Some protection ought to be afforded to the general public. I have been disillusioned in no uncertain fashion by certain actions that have taken place in my own county, not only on the question of digging up coal and subsidence inadvertently occurring, but on the question of the coal companies in many instances actually making a direct road to where houses were standing and saying to the local authorities, "We intend to remove the coal from underneath the site of your houses. It is up to you to pay compensation to prevent us from doing so." That is quite a general practice in my county. The local authorities are faced with this very difficult position that

houses are required in mining areas. We require a large number of houses to meet the demand in Ayrshire, where new collieries are to be sunk and where collieries are to be developed. As is well known, we cannot continue mining without a mining population. In many of these areas there is coal wherever you like to look for a site.
It will add enormously to the cost of house building and will add enormously to the rents that are to be paid if, first, support has to be bought for the houses before they are built. The position we are faced with is that of not only looking for sites and finding whether they are suitable in other respects but in order to be safe before starting having to buy support for the houses that are to be placed on the site. There is a case at the present time at New Cumnock in which we have been informed by the New Cumnock Collieries which has quite recently extracted £6,000 from the county council, "We are going to extract the coal from underneath the site where 84 council houses are standing." I do not know what price will be paid to buy support. It will be enormous, but the Dick Turpins say, "Pay up or down the houses come." First, they say to the local authority, "We require houses to house the workers to extract the coal." The collieries tell us that they cannot go on unless they have houses. Then they say to the county council, whom they have asked for houses, "Pay, or down come your 84 houses."

The Chairman: The hon. Member is carrying the argument extremely far. I have given a good deal of latitude to previous speakers, but I think the hon. Member is very wide of the Question before the Committee which is whether the Clause, as it is, shall stand part of the Bil.

Mr. Sloan: I was merely illustrating the difficulty we are in regarding this question of mineral support and this question of compensation. It cuts both ways. First of all the position was that if the house came down there was no compensation. They are now reversing the process and saying, "If you want houses to remain, pay compensation." That is the point I am following. A coal company started a little mine with a 3-foot seam of coal and they made for a housing scheme and extracted £4,000 from the Ayrshire county


council. The whole equipment of the colliery, the whole plant they had on the ground, would not have cost £400, and they secured £400, of compensation from the county council to save their houses. Really, we have reached a point when this Committee must do something in this matter. When the landowners themselves owned the royalties they let the royalties and then compelled the companies to work the coal. The companies said, "We cannot release you. We must work this coal because we are under contract to do so." The royalty owners demanded the royalties if the coal was left, and the coal companies demanded compensation if they were not allowed to extract the coal. That is the question we are now facing. Now that the State owns the royalties, some protection ought to be afforded to the general public with regard to the buildings on sites where the coal is unwanted.

Mr. Woodburn: I wish to make a small point with regard to the question of compensation. It seems to me that we are putting the cart before the horse, and that as far as possible these subsidences should be prevented altogether. I think if that is dealt with, a great deal of this other trouble will disappear. In my own county we are faced not only with the difficulty of not being able to build houses, but with a position in which, if the thing goes much further, we shall have a great arm of the sea running for 20 miles in one of the most beautiful valleys in Scotland. It really is a serious problem.

The Chairman: The hon. Member is quite out of Order. We are dealing with the question of compensation in a restricted class of case. There is a new Clause on the Order Paper with regard to prevention of subsidences. I hope we shall not repeat all these arguments on the new Clause.

Mr. Woodburn: I will conclude by saying that I think the slag heaps should be taken off the surface and put underneath, to keep the ground up.

Mr. George Griffiths: I wish to put a view which has not yet been heard. I wish to speak for the owner-occupier. Insurance and building societies have urged working class men in the past, "Buy your own houses. We will lend you the money." The Small Dwell-

ings Acquisition Act passed in this House a few years ago, has assisted hundreds of miners to buy their own houses through the local authority. The local authority was enabled to lend the money for a mortgage at a cheaper rate than any building society. Scores of people in my division have mortgaged their houses for £400 or £500. They have borrowed from the local authority, and the local authority have got the money from the Government. I know of a little hamlet in my township where there are 78 houses with owner-occupiers. These houses are between two colliery companies. The colliery companies have worked out the bottom seams, and are now working seams nearer the surface. That will lead to subsidence more quickly than if they had been working seams lower down. Are not these people to have compensation, when not only are their life savings involved but they have mortgages as well? If there is a subsidence the houses are cracked. Some of us know something about that. My own house is cracked because of damage done by the workings. Are these people to have no compensation from the Government, who have lent the money to build the houses? The people have still to pay off the mortgages as well as to rebuild the houses. You ask our folks to build houses of their own, in their own colliery villages. When a man has a house of his own he has a pride in it, and so has his wife. If this sort of thing is to occur now that the Government have taken over the royalties, the miners will feel that once again they have had the worst crack of the whip. I hope that the Minister will say, "I did not see it in that way before, but we are prepared to give what you ask for."

Mr. Murray (Spennymoor): I have always felt that the colliery owner, to a large degree, is like thunder and lightning. He strikes where he likes, and no one can do anything about it. The only difference is that if your house is struck by lightning, you are told that it is an act of God, whereas in this case it is a man who comes forward and destroys property. In the village where I live two churches have been destroyed and another badly damaged by subsidence. In the part of the village nearest the colliery, houses have become uninhabitable as a result, although people are crying out for places to live in. If a person lives in a house, he is affected there by subsidence, and has to pay for it; if he goes to


church to worship, he has to pay for it there; and if he goes to the club, he has to pay for it again there. In Durham we built some aged miners' homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) touched upon that matter very effectively. There was a slight fault. When the coal was taken away, the houses sidled towards the fault, and new ceilings had to be put in. Because the damage was caused by mining subsidence, it had to be paid for by the association. I hope that the Minister will put these people who cannot afford to pay, in the same position as others.

Mr. Ritson: I have had the surprise of my life to-day. I was a lodge official at one time to a colliery company, where we had innumerable claims, and the colliery company had to pay them. In one year the company paid £60,000, and gave notice to 600 of our men because of the claims they were making against a very virile and good seam. As a Socialist, believing in nationalisation, I thought that after we had got nationalisation of royalties we should get justice all round. Now all my political beliefs are upset. The colliery companies would pay a claim for any woman who had a child born before the time because of subsidence. Everybody put in claims except the people in the cemetery, and they omitted to do so only because they had settled down. If damage is caused by subsidence it should be paid for. Claims were met not only in respect of houses, but sometimes in respect of fields where subsidence has made it impossible to graze cattle. I am sure my hon. Friend from Staffordshire will have had experience of that In Northumberland I had to examine some royalties because somebody's cattle had been injured by subsidence. I hope that the Minister will respond to the appeal of people who have had practical experience of this sort of thing. It means a very hard struggle for a man to build a house. It took me many years to do it, and now that I have got one built I am told that if it is damaged by subsidence, I cannot be compensated, because I belong to a certain class of owners. That is very wrong and far away from the principles that were announced in the very hard fight that we had over the nationalisation of royalties.
I remember a working 1,500 feet from the top, and still people claimed vast sums at a most extravagant rate. I remember a man claiming £2,500 in respect of his house. He got it and was able to live in the house 12 months afterwards. The colliery company repeatedly said that they could not go on with such vast claims against them. Every claim that could possibly be made was made, and as a miners' lodge we protested against that action. I would ask the Minister, who takes a practical and keen interest in his work, and the Parliamentary Secretary, armed with the authority of the Attorney-General, to grant us our request. We are not lawyers looking for something. We are practical men with experience of collieries and of what has happened. We do not live in castles and villas, but we are men who have had to struggle, and I ask the Minister to give justice to the small men as well as to the large men.

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Major Lloyd George): I do not think it is necessary for me to say that the experiences to which hon. Members opposite have referred and which are acknowledged now all over the country are not to be disregarded. This House, before the war, introduced a Measure to deal with this very big and difficult question. It went to another place, where it was decided to send it to a Select Committee. Then the war came, and that remained the position. I have been asked a question within the last few days as to the attitude of the Government towards the general question of compensation for subsidence. The question, which was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton (Sir R. Young), asked about the Bill which had passed through all its stages in June, 1939, whether we would have the matter reconsidered and remitted for attention by the authority responsible for post-war reconstruction, especially on account of the hardships of small owners. The answer to all three parts of the question is "Yes." Hon. Members opposite will appreciate that it is a very big question which will have to be dealt with as part of the post-war reconstruction.
I would ask hon. Members to remember that this Bill, as I mentioned on Second Reading, is surely a Bill to tidy up one or two things which were wrong in the Act of 1938. I ask hon. Gentlemen


opposite to believe me when I say that I am not trying to dodge anything on this matter at all. I appreciate the seriousness of the question, and it is a matter which will have to be reconsidered in common with a good many other amenities in mining districts. The whole Bill, and particularly the Clause which has given rise to this discussion, does not do what one or two hon. Gentlemen have suggested. I rather gathered from one or two speakers that this is a concession to a certain privileged few. I will explain what the Clause actually does. The largest part of the coal of this country to-day is worked under leases granted before the Coal Act came in. My hon. Friend gave the case of a colliery company which had to pay £60,000. It was in the lease. Where most of this damage has occurred you will find that the lease was granted without any question of compensation at all. The lease the Commission will be empowered to grant is one of the things we have to clear up. In some leases the lessee had to give notice of approach when he came near certain property on which the lessor had buildings or whatever it might be. The lessor could then either give consent to the working of the coal or he could refuse consent. He had absolute power to refuse to allow coal to be worked as long as he was the surface owner and the royalty owner too. The question now arises as to what would be the position of the owners of the coal. There was a great deal of doubt whether the surface men would still not have the right to say "Yes" or "No" to the working of the coal.
But one of the main purposes of the Bill is to see that coal is worked properly. Clause 10 of the Bill we are discussing has been drafted in order that the Commission might insist upon the coal being worked. You have not given any privilege. You have taken away by Clause 10 a right which the surface owner had. Before that he could refuse permission to do anything at all. Clause 10 has the only purpose of allowing the Commission to say whether that coal shall be worked or not. The larger question, which I have already indicated I am deeply interested in, is a very much larger question, which I doubt very much whether the Commission could handle. It is a question of importance to this country, and I repeat the assur-

ance that I gave in answer to a question of my hon. Friend that this is a matter which will be put before those responsible for post-war reconstruction.

Mr. G. Griffiths: If the Government are going to allow a coalowner to work coal now and a subsidence occurs, will these people get compensation under Clause 10?

Major Lloyd George: Only if the Commission are empowered to say "Yes" or "No." Having said that, they are also empowered to pay compensation. It is within the powers of the Commission either to refuse or consent. Therefore, it is for them to judge. It may well be, if they give a lease in certain directions, the companies will have to face it. It is for the Commission themselves to decide whether it be "Yes" or "No."

Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

Clauses 11 to 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

CLAUSE 15.—(Dissolution of Coal Mines National Industrial Board.)

Amendment made: In page 10, line 17, insert "Part IV." —[Major Lloyd George.]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 16 and 17 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

NEW CLAUSE 4.—(Stamp duty on substitutional leases granted by Commission.)

(1) Where—

(a) any person is entitled as working lessee under two or more leases to any coal or mines of coal; and
(b) the Coal Commission grant to him or to another person for his benefit, in substituation for the existing leases, a single lease of coal or mines of coal comprised therein (whether or not the single lease comprises also property not comprised in the existing leases, or does not comprise all the property comprised in some of those leases);

the stamp duty on the single lease shall be reduced by such amount as appears to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to be just, having regard to the duty paid on the existing leases and to the length of the terms thereunder unexpired, and the rights of the working lessee thereunder, at the date when the term under the single lease takes effect 
Provided that no lease which is unstamped or which would, apart from this section, be insufficiently stamped, shall be deemed by


virtue of this section to be duly stamped unless it has in accordance with the provisions of Section twelve of the Stamp Act, 1891, been stamped with a particular stamp denoting that it is not chargeable with any duty or that it is duly stamped, as the case may be.
(2) In his section the expression "working lessee" means a person carrying on the business of coal mining who is entitled to work coal, or to use for coal mining purposes a mine of coal, under a coal mining lease held by him or by another for his benefit.—[Major Lloyd George.]

Brought up, and read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

NEW CLAUSE 5.—(Stamp duty on alienation of coal to former owner for purposes other than coal mining.)

(1) Where, under Sub-section (3) of Section seventeen of the principal Act (winch permits the Commission to alienate coal or a mine of coal for purposes other than coal mining or coal of small value), the Commission alienate any coal or mine of coal for a freehold interest, then if the Commission certify that the person to whom the coal or mine is alienated would in their opinion have been entitled, but for the passing of the principal Act, to any interest therein acquired by the Commission under that Act, stamp duty in respect of the alienation shall be chargeable only on the amount, if any, by which the value of the interest for which the coal or mine is alienated appears to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to exceed the value of the interest specified in the certificate:
Provided that no instrument which is unstamped or which would, apart from this section, be insufficiently stamped, shall be deemed by virtue of this section to be duly stamped unless it has in accordance with the provisions of Section twelve of the Stamp Act, 1891, been stamped with a particular stamp denoting that it is not chargeable with any duty or that it is duly stamped, as the case may be.
(2) For the purpose of the foregoing subsection, the value of the interest specified in the certificate shall be taken to be the value which that interest would have had at the date of the alienation, having regard to any dispositions or purported dispositions actually made thereof and of any interests to which it was subject immediately before the vesting date, if none of the said interests had been affected by the principal Act.
(3) This section applies to any such alienation whether made before or after the passing of this Act, and any duty overpaid in respect of any alienation made before the passing of this Act as respects which the Commission give a certificate under this section shall be repaid.—[Major Lloyd George.]

Brought up, and read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

NEW CLAUSE.—(Costs in connection with severance of leases.)

The proviso to Sub-section (3) of Section eleven of the principal Act (which provides

that the arbitrator or the Court may direct that the Commission shall not be liable to pay costs in connection with the severance of a lease incurred by a person who appears to the Court to have been unreasonable or guilty of negligence or default) shall have effect as if for the words "who appears to the Court" there were substituted the words "who appears to the arbitrator or the Court"—[Major Lloyd George.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Major Lloyd George: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
Section II of the Act of 1938 deals with the case where the ownership of property comprised in a lease was severed by the Act, part being transferred to the Commission and part remaining under the same ownership. Sub-section (I) of the Section provides that in these cases the amount of the rent to be apportioned to each part shall be determined by arbitration in default of agreement. Sub-section (3) provides that the Commission are to pay the cost of this arbitration and of all applications made to the court for the purpose of determining the rights and liabilities of the persons affected. The proviso to Sub-section (3), which is amended by this new Clause, provides that the arbitrator or the court may deprive a person of costs which appear to the court, not to the arbitrator, to have been incurred unreasonably. As the proviso stands at present, a person who has acted unreasonably in the proceedings before the arbitrator can be deprived of costs by the arbitrator unless it is shown to the court that they are unreasonable. We think that the whole matter ought to be left to the arbitrator.

Question put, and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

NEW CLAUSE.—(Restriction on working of coal.)

Section thirty-three of the principal Act, which imposes a restriction on the working of coal vested in statutory undertakers, shall extend and be deemed always to have extended to county councils and other local authorities for the purposes of the functions conferred upon them by any Act of Parliament or by any order or regulation made thereunder, and accordingly that Section shall have effect and be deemed always to have had effect as if—

(a)in the third line of Sub-section (I) thereof the words "vested in a county council or other local authority for the purposes of the functions conferred upon them by any Act of Parliament or by any order


or regulation made thereunder or," were inserted after the word "Act";
(b) in the tenth line of Sub-section (I) thereof the words "for the purposes of the said functions or acquired," were inserted after the word "acquired";
(c) in the sixteenth line of Sub-section (1) thereof the words "of the county council or other local authority or," were inserted after the word "writing";
(d) in the second line of Sub-section (2) thereof the words "the county council or other local authority or," were inserted after the word "which"
(e) in the seventh line of Sub-section (2) thereof the words "the county council or other local authority or," were inserted after the word "as";
(f) in the third line of Sub-section (5) thereof the words "the county council or other local authority or of," were inserted after the word "of";
(g) in the eighth line of Sub-section (5) thereof the words "county council or other local authority or the," were inserted after the word "the";
(h) in the second line of Sub-section (6) thereof the words "the county council or other local authority or by," were inserted after the word "by."—[Sir J. Lamb.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Sir J. Lamb: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
I move this new Clause on behalf of the County Councils' Association and other local authorities, and in doing so I apologise to the Committee for the form it takes. I think it is a wonderful example of legislation by reference, but it contains a straightforward question of principle to which I will refer in a few moments. Perhaps I may explain that the Clause is consequential upon a very long Section of the 1938 Act. That Act gives protection to statutory authorities and all local authorities where they are acting in the capacity of statutory authorities. It prevents coal which is owned by them being obtained without their consent if they owned that coal prior to the passing of that Act. It shall not be worked without consent, which shall not be unreasonably withheld. What I am asking for now is something very simple but very just, namely, that we should extend the power of the local authorities not only when they are acting as statutory undertakings, but when they are acting in pursuance of duties which have been placed upon them by this House. There are many other duties which they have to perform and for which they do not get the semi-

protection which the 1938 Act gives them. For instance, they are concerned with schools, hospitals, town halls and very large blocks of municipal or county offices. The authorities could get protection if they were acting as statutory authorities. Surely the services which are being rendered by them as local authorities in connection with schools, hospitals and the like are quite as essential to the well-being of the public as those which are being operated by them in the form of a statutory authority. It is only right that they should be given the same safeguard under one as the other.
We know that in the past it was the practice of many authorities to buy supporting minerals for the sake of protecting their buildings. It was a costly thing to do, but they did it, and, as we know, great expense fell on the public, many of whom were not receiving benefits from the minerals. The Minister may say, "There will be compensation," but I understand that where this coal exists it is thought that there will be a nil valuation. How will that affect local authorities when they are asking for compensation for something which is valued at nothing? Local authorities where they are acting as statutory authorities or under duties which have been placed upon them by this House should receive the same treatment. Even this new Clause does not go as far as I would like. I can only deal with coal which was vested in the authority prior to 1938. I cannot go into the question of compensation for other damage. I hope the plea which I have made on behalf of the local authorities will be accepted.

Mr. Magnay: I beg formally to support the Motion.

The Attorney-General: What I say, although not wholly satisfactory to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir J. Lamb), may do something to reassure him. So far as this part of the general topic is concerned, persons fall into two categories. They appear to be very different superficially, but I do not believe that in substance there is a great deal of difference in the final result. Therefore the statutory undertakings which are mentioned in Section 33 should carry on the undertakings which are more or less essential to the life of the community.
The important point about Section 33 is that many of these are undertakings—


probably all are in part undertakings—the cessation of which without notice might cause grave public inconvenience. They have a pima facie right of veto. In the first instance, they can say, "No, you must not work the coal of which we were formerly the owners in fee simple and which is directly under our undertaking." If the Commission thinks that is unreasonable and that the coal ought to be worked, because the danger of damage to the works on the surface is negligible or because as might happen, the works although they belong to a statutory undertaker are not a vital part of the undertaking, and that if some damage occurs it can be dealt with by underpinning or by compensation—after all they are entrusted with the duty of seeing that coal which can properly be worked is worked—they can take the statutory undertaker to the Railway and Canal Commission and say, "These people have exercised their prima facie right of veto. We think this coal ought to be worked and we do not think there is anything in the special services which they have to give to the public which would justify them in putting a veto on the working of the coal. That is the requirement behind the veto if they exercise it in the first instance. The Coal Commission can start by saying "We think this coal ought to be worked."
The local authorities for whom my hon. Friend is speaking can, like the rest of us, if they think the danger of damage is such that it ought not to be worked, go to the Railway and Canal Commission and make their protest. So that in whichever compartment you start, whether you start as a statutory undertaker with a primary right of veto, or as someone not a statutory undertaker, with the Coal Commission primarily having the right to decide, in both cases, if objection is felt by the other party, you finish up before the Railway and Canal Commission. There are some industries which are not statutory undertakers and which are of vital importance to the community, and it would be contrary to the national interest that damage should be done by working the coal. The principle on which we went in the original Act and to which, I hope, the Committee will adhere, is that we did not think it right to put into Section 33 of the original Act statutory undertakings dealing with the

matters there set out—water supply, electricity supply, tramways and so on. We felt that the other activities of local authorities which have been referred to, such as hospitals, schools, and municipal buildings, important as they are, fell very much in the same category as many other buildings not owned by local authorities. Hospitals, schools, and municipal buildings are very much in the same general category as offices. Though there is work done in many offices which is not as useful as the work done in municipal buildings, there may be work done in some offices which is equally useful. We thought that the right place to draw the line.
I sympathise with the County Councils Association, and take no objection to their raising of the point, but we think it better to leave the line drawn where it is. It does not make much difference, if any. If a county council or local authority has reason to think that damage which cannot be properly dealt with by compensation may result from coal being worked under their buildings, they can go to the Railway and Canal Commission, like everyone else, and in the result, no harm will be done but, apart from the statutory undertakers, the Commission is the right body in the national interest to have the first voice.

Mr. David Grenfell: Is it clear that, if a county council or a statutory undertaking fears that damage might be done to the property by such working, it has the right to lay a complaint with the Railway and Canal Commission, which would have regard and consideration to the problem of subsidence or damage to property, and full scope and opportunity would be given by a competent body for discussion of the point before a decision is made?

The Attorney-General: That is the position.

Mr. R. J. Taylor: It seems to me that in this case it is not the question of compensation that is concerning the county councils so much as the desire to protect buildings, by means of which a very useful service is performed. It sounds well when we speak of the national interest in working coal. Of course, we want to work the coal in the national interest. The complaint that most of us on this side have made during the whole of


our lifetime is that the coal has never been treated as a national asset but as a means of making private profit. We have millions of tons which never have been and never will be worked, simply because the owners have not treated it as a national asset. Here you may have a statutory body on the one hand and a non-statutory body on the other. The important thing to me is that the coal is not evenly distributed all over the country. You may have places, like Bournemouth, which will be immune from any damage at all and will continue to have all the amenities of beautiful towns, and you may have considerable areas of built-up property, rendering a useful service to the community in the coal areas which may now be considerably damaged and for which no compensation will requite the local authority. It seems to me that the problem goes a good deal further than the question of compensation, because the damage that can be done may be irreparable.

The Attorney-General: That is why there is the right to go to the Commission to get it stopped.

Mr. Taylor: I take it that what the Mover of the Clause wants is to veto their right to go to the Railway Commission at all? It seems to me that this is a case in which the coal districts will be the losers in this bargain if the Commission agrees to the coal being worked. I know areas where provision has been made under valuable buildings for coal to be worked on the pillar system so that there will be no subsidence. Coal is not worked in that way now. It is taken out on the long wall face, and it is impossible to prevent damage being done. I take it we have the assurance from the Attorney-General that there will be adequate safeguards for the local authority, if they can prove that the damage which will be done will be such that the coal will not be worth taking.

Sir J. Lamb: I regret that the Attorney-General cannot give what I am asking for in this new Clause. He has attempted to draw a distinction between action taken by a local authority as a statutory authority and action taken by it as a local authority. I admit that if gas, water or electricity were taken away, immediately, it would be serious, but I cannot admit that if a hospital has to be evacuated straight away it is not a serious thing.

There have been cases of hospitals having to be evacuated immediately and the patients removed elsewhere. The same applies to schools. If the children have to be evacuated, there are no other schools to which they can go. The education of a child cannot be delayed. The child grows out of the period when it should be receiving instruction and later education does not compensate for what it has missed. The only satisfaction I have received from the Attorney-General is that the Railway and Canal Commission will deal with the matter. Are we to be prejudiced in the compensation which my right hon. and learned Friend says we may get from the Railway and Canal Commission, because the coal now under the buildings is put down at a nil valuation? We fear that if we have this coal specified as being of no valuation, it may be bought out again later and we may be told that we are asking for compensation for something which is stated to be of no value.

The Attorney-General: I do not think that that would have anything to do with it. The question, as I see it, will arise if the Coal Commission wants to work coal and the owner of the surface buildings, in this case the local authority, say that it will be dangerous to work it. That question will be decided "Aye" or "No." I quite see that if the local authority has put in a big claim for compensation on the ground that it was workable coal, they will have to get over that in the argument before the Commission. My hon. Friend put a case in which they have put in a nil valuation. If the Railway and Canal Commission decide that it is not to be worked, everybody, including the local authority, will be happy. If leave is given to work it, and damage is done, that is dealt with under a Schedule to the original Act, and the nil valuation will have nothing to do with it.

Sir J. Lamb: I understand that it will be the valuation of the buildings or of the damage done to the buildings, and not the valuation of the coal which has caused the damage. I do not suppose that I can do other than accept the decision of the Minister, and I, therefore, beg to ask leave to withdraw the Clause.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

NEW CLAusE.—(Prevention of subsidence or accumulation of refuse.)

(1) The Commission may, where in their opinion such action is necessary in order to prevent subsidence or the accumulation on the surface of any refuse from a coal mine, require the owner of any coal-mining undertaking to take whatever steps, in the opinion of the Commission, are reasonable and practicable to pack and stow places from which coal is extracted by the undertaking.
(2) Any owner of a coal-mining undertaking who makes default in complying with any requirement made under this Section shall be guilty of an offence and shall he liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding 5o pounds or, in the case of a person convicted of a second or subsequent offence under this Section, to a fine not exceeding 50o pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or to both such imprisonment and fine.—[Mr. D. Adams.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. David Adams: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
The purpose of the new Clause is the prevention of subsidence or the accumulation of refuse upon the surface. It seems to me that this is an overdue statutory reform. One might have expected that during the last 50 years it would have been a statutory obligation upon all companies working coal to prevent the great evils arising from subsidence which have been so admirably illustrated by Members and the Minister to-day. Colliery subsidences are an unquestioned menace to social and family life and to the best interests of communities which are compelled to be residents in mining areas. We think the hour has now struck when industrial concerns should be expected to fulfil their obligations to the community and end a serious abuse. The Clause set out steps which, in our judgment, ought to be taken in order to prevent these twin evils. It asks that refuse from the working of coal should be packed and stowed in places from which it has been extracted. This is a very innocuous and extraordinarily mild Clause. I read it twice and thrice in order to make certain that it was innocuous. It states that the action taken shall be at the discretion of the Coal Commission. If the Coal Commission think that they could not call on coalowners to take reasonable and practical steps, the Commission will take no action, but if the Commission think that such steps are necessary, in the private and public interest, these steps ought to be taken. There is abundant evidence

that stowing and packing are very successful where properly carried out, and if these processes were general, it would be a very great reform.
In evidence given before the Royal Commission on Mining Subsidence in 1923 representatives of Yorkshire stated that the mechanical packing and stowing of underground refuse was in general operation and as a result there was practically no subsidence in their areas. We know that in many coalfields on the Continent, where the power of the State is so much greater, the refuse is brought to the surface, and there subjected to hydraulic pressure and formed into concrete-like slabs, and that these are then taken underground and carefully and scientifically stowed in the places from which the coal has been taken, with the result that the area is unaware that coal mining is in existence. If we could adopt this system of stowing underground and overground refuse—and the Yorkshire collieries were able to obtain stone and other material for the purpose from the screens and from round about the mines—it would have quite a number of important results. There would be increased safety for the coal workers through the prevention of falls and accumulations of gas; there would be improved ventilation and a lessening of the fear of explosion; and, in addition to that, if stowage were statutorily enforced all pillars and barriers now left could be worked.
Throughout the coalfields there is a vast amount of valuable coal which has been left underground, because stowage has not been attempted, to prevent subsidences. The evidence submitted to the Royal Commission was that when pillars are left much greater damage is done to the surface by reason of the uneven situation which occurs underground, and that if these pillars were worked and if there were subsidences—as there might be—there would be a more even fall, thereby lessening damage to property of all kinds. In addition, the colliery owners would have the benefit of these unworked pillars and barriers of coal. We ought to recognise to-day that coal is national wealth, too valuable to be left underground unused. If it were worked it would provide additional employment, and in a certain area with which I am acquainted I am advised that the barriers, which are numerous and large, would give an


additional lease of life to the area. That observation would apply, I presume, to many of our coalfields and our colliery towns. On those grounds alone we contend that i1 is essential that the Commission should be endowed with this authority by statute. The time has come when mechanical or other forms of stowage must be made effective throughout the coalfields, in order to eliminate the great loss and waste of national wealth caused by leaving coal underground.
I come next to the other part of the Clause, which says we should prevent any accumulation of refuse upon the surface. No person who enters County Durham for the first time can be other than struck with the very unpicturesque heaps, standing out like mighty pyramids, of enormous height, and containing many hundreds of thousands of tons of refuse; but one effect of these heaps, I am informed, is that their great weight is producing subsidence in non-raining areas contiguous to them, causing damage to non-colliery property, buildings and works. Another effect of these heaps which we say ought to be avoided is that the landscape is disfigured. There is no reason why that delightful county of hills and dales, Durham—and Northumberland, two illustrious industrial counties—should be other than beautiful. The charm of many large areas has departed, and that will be the condition of affairs until, in a wiser day, these heaps are removed.
Further, dust comes from the heaps, and many of them take fire, producing deadly tomes which are injurious to man and beast. The fumes damage the paint work of homes, the furniture, pictures, etc., and in certain of our areas which I know well the windows are perennially kept shut, night and day, on account of the fumes. The fresh air which ought to be the prerogative of family life is denied to these unfortunate residents. I need not mention the effect of the fumes upon our colliery gardens and upon the foodstuffs which the workers in the collieries are growing in their spare time.
This Clause is, in my judgment and that of my colleagues, essentially necessary and singularly reasonable. It is of local and national importance and should unquestionably find a place in this Bill. If it is rejected the colliery workers and those associated with them in the area from which I come—and their attention

has been directed to this hard hand of fate for many years, and they feel they have a deep and abiding grievance—will conclude that industry rather than the broader interests of the industrial workers and others concerned must have been regarded as having the first, second and third call upon the State and upon the Government of the day. This is a proposal which will add to the national wealth by introducing a general system of packing and storing underground, and will eliminate one of the great evils of industrial mining areas. I trust that the Minister will see his way to accepting this very moderate Clause.

Mr. Tinker: I beg to support the Motion. The mover of this Clause has shown a depth of knowledge which, in a non-miner, one would hardly expect. My hon. Friend covered the whole ground very well, and I wondered how anybody without a practical knowledge of mining could display the knowledge that he has done. To-day we have been discussing damage to property and attempting to prevent it happening. My hon. Friend is asking in this Clause that there should be in the hands of the Commissioners power to tell a colliery owner that he must stow the mine workings. It is as well for this Committee to know what that expression means. Many times during colliery Debates I have wondered whether hon. Members were fully alive to the meanings of the various expressions which were used in connection with the working of coal.
What is meant by stowing is common knowledge, and this is its meaning From the bowels of the earth are extracted certain thicknesses of seam of coal, perhaps 4 ft. or 7 ft. thick. After a lapse of years the roof of the workings falls gradually, and there is a subsidence on the surface to the same extent as the depth of the seam of coal that has been taken out. When you have seams varying from 6 ft. to 20 ft. thick, the surface gradually drops to that extent ultimately, and therefore you have a depression on the land above. All property on that land gradually collapses or shows signs of deterioration. If there is no property on the surface, water accumulates in the depression. That is the first matter that we want to deal with. We want to say that coal, which is national wealth and has undoubtedly to be extracted, should be


got out in such a way as to prevent the desolation of the land upon the surface. Is there any practical means of ensuring that? We say that there is.
We want to put into the hands of the Commission power to go to a colliery owner and to say, "We have seen so much damage being done that we have been given the power to tell you that this must not take place." How can it be done? In the extraction of coal a certain amount of waste is caused, such as in the making of roadways, and a certain section has to be taken out of the mine. It is not coal but is what we call dirt or rough. It is usually sent to the surface. We are asking that the rough should be stowed in the place from which the coal has been extracted. There is another thing. In the coal that has been sent up there is a certain amount of dirt, and the result is the huge accumulations of dirt on the surface. If the Deputy-Chairman will let me—I do not know whether he has ever been in Lancashire—I shall be pleased to take him round my native place, St. Helens, and point out these heaps to him.

The Deputy-Chairman (Mr. Charles Williams): The remarks of the hon. Member are certainly outside the scope of the Debate, however tempting his invitation may be.

Mr. Tinker: What I want to impress upon your mind is what it must mean to us who live among these things. Coming along this morning, we saw these vast heaps, and I wondered whether I should have an opportunity to tell this Committee exactly the impression on our minds. We asked ourselves whether it was right that anybody should have the power to leave those vast mounds of waste to be an eyesore to everybody. In the proposed new Clause we are appealing to the Minister to use his best efforts to secure that in future in the working of the coal the kind of thing that has happened in the past shall not happen again, and to say, "I intend to prevent this accumulation of waste. I intend to do what I can to keep the surface in something like its proper form and deal with this question of subsidence and in addition prevent these big mounds growing up." That is what the Clause means. It may be that we shall not be able to get it carried to-day, but it will bring from the Minister some explanation

as to what the Government intend for the future. If only we can get the point established that something must be done now or in the immediate future, I shall be well satisfied that our work has not been in vain. It is in that spirit that we are asking the Committee to examine it and see what can be done.

Mr. Tom Brown: On 24th June the hon. Members for Leigh (Mr. Tinker), Consett (Mr. D. Adams), East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn) and myself endeavoured to focus the attention of Members and in particular the attention of the Minister of Town and Country Planning by requesting him to have regard in the post-war reconstruction policy to the question of beautifying the industrial districts by the planting of trees. That Debate, short though it was, caused a great deal of comment, very pleasing comment too. Now to-day we are making an endeavour to get preventive measures by asking the Committee to give powers to the Coal Commission for packing and stowing underground in the coalmines of this country. If I did nothing more than repeat the arguments of the previous speakers on Clause 10, I think there would be found in those arguments sufficient evidence for the adding of this particular Clause to the Bill. It is very interesting to me as a mineworker or as an ex-miner of over 35 years' experience to speak upon the subject of packing and stowing and the advisability of carrying out a policy of the character which is indicated in the new Clause we are now discussing. As I said previously, I have been interested in this matter for a period of 25 to 30 years, but I have no desire to detain the Committee more than five or ten minutes.
I do want us in our consideration of this new Clause to take a retrospective glance into the past when matters of this character have been before the House. According to the records of this House, a Bill relating to compensation for subsidence was presented to the House on 23rd April, 1919, which is 24 years ago. It managed to get a Second Reading, but the Government of that time requested the withdrawal of the Bill and, realising the importance of this subject, said they would refer the matter of damage arising from mining subsidence and the relevant factors to a Royal Commission. This was done, and on 15th June, 1923, the Royal Commission was appointed. They first


considered, because of its outstanding importance, the question of damage arising from mining subsidence in the Doncaster area of Yorkshire. The second and final Report of that Commission was presented on 23rd July, 1927. It is interesting to read some of the evidence given to that Commission by many local authorities which exist in the coalfields of this country. It is also interesting to see what the members of the Royal Commission had to say on the methods of mitigating mining subsidence. After due consideration, and after all the evidence had been submitted, here is what they recommended:
It becomes important, therefore, to ascertain how far the consequences of subsidence can be neutralised or modified. If effective steps can be taken, it may well be that the expense, not being, of course, prohibitive, ought to be incurred where it has to be borne by the mining worker or the surface owner.
They made three suggestions, one of which has been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Consett. They urged hydraulic stowage and more scientific methods of mining, scientific methods underground and on the surface, and all precautions possible in the construction of surface buildings. Surely, we cannot continue to ignore the express judgment of an important body appointed by the Government. I speak with some authority of the district which I have the honour to represent. It may be that my information and my experience can be multiplied by every mining town and village in this country. There are in the constituency which I represent 20 different mines from the surface to a depth of 820 yards. They vary in thickness from 1 foot it inches to 7 feet, and they vary in depth from the surface from 51 yards to 820 yards. The thickness of those mines is over 70 feet—that is to say, if you were to put them one on top of the other, without the strata between you would get 70 feet of clear coal. If a colliery company is employing to win coal three, four or five mines at one time, as is often the case, tremendous damage is likely to result unless the cavity created is systematically stowed or packed. Hon. Members will see the importance of the Clause we are now discussing.
Let me give some very interesting data. Seventy-five per cent. of the township in which I live was at one time subject to mining subsidence and the damage consequently done by the extraction of coal.

The Southern portion, known as Platt Bridge, has subsided 16 feet since 1868. A point in Liverpool Road which is opposite the Employment Exchange has subsided 27 feet since 1868. The main road between Wigan and Manchester has subsided 8 feet and between Leigh and Wigan 9 feet. That is very serious. Think of the colossal waste that is taking place due to mining subsidence. Not only does it upset the main roadways, but it causes untold anxiety to public utility undertakings, such as gas, water, electricity and sewage. In 1909 the banks of the brook which runs through our little township had to be raised, and the lotal authority had to resewer the district at a cost of £15,000. I am speaking of this, because I happened to be the chairman of the authority which had this awful mess to face. The sewage disposal works at Platt Bridge were rendered ineffective owing to subsidence, and they are now being reconstructed at a cost to the local authority of £23,000. The brook into which the effluent discharges has been lowered at a cost of £5,800. The main sewer from the township to the disposal works has been re-laid several times, costing over £10,000. Certain lengths of that sewer were originally laid between 10 to 12 feet underground, and are now 6 feet above the surface.

The Deputy-Chairman: I do not want to stop the hon. Member, but if we are to have a description of so many of the mining villages, it will make a very wide Debate on a really narrow point.

Mr. Brown: I am sorry, but I would like to say that that is not the complete picture. As I mentioned on 24th June, we have, owing to mining subsidence, 150 acres covered with pit shale and metal which, in my judgment, as a practical miner, ought never to have seen the light of day and ought to have been packed underground and stowed in the cavity created by the extraction of coal. We have over 80 acres of land under water because of mining subsidence. One could go on for some time relating the colossal damage, the waste, anxiety and feeling of insecurity created by subsidence which ought to be avoided if proper methods were adopted. I know that there are arguments which will be advanced by the big firms that they cannot undertake systematic packing or stowing. I have in my village—and I must refer to this—a pit


which has been in commission up to recently for 75 years, and the proud boast of the manager of that pit was that he had never had a man carried out on a stretcher. That is because he believed in packing all the foreign debris underground. The foreign material was only one day on the surface when it was sent back underground.
There is another very important point which leads to the strengthening of our case. During the last 20 or 25 years there has been a complete change in the method of mining work. The old pillar and stall days are gone. The long wall system has now been put into operation, which aggravates the position from the point of view of mining subsidence. We have coal faces 200 to 300 yards long, and jibs as deep as 4 ft. 6 in. to 5 ft. where for six days every week, 30 ft. of coal 200 yds. long is being extracted. This leaves behind cavities which should be packed with the débris from the road wastes. I have always thought it was important to see that the cavity created by the extraction of the mineral, in this case coal, was stowed or packed in order to give protection and get proper roof control. I know that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will agree because he has practical experience in the pits. Further, besides improving roof control it will improve ventilation, which is of paramount importance to the mine-worker, especially in some of our deep mines. People in mining districts have, to a large extent, accepted the desolation seen all around them for years as part of the price they have to pay for industrial prosperity. But now—and I welcome it—they have a loftier conception of what life should be, and I hope the Ministry and the Commission will be empowered to compel those who extract coal to fill in the cavities, so that subsidences shall be minimised if not completely eliminated.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power (Mr. Tom Smith): If I cannot accept this Clause as worded it is not because I do not appreciate the spirit in which it has been moved and discussed. The problem of mining subsidence, how to prevent it and compensation in cases of damage is one of many years' standing. My hon. Friend the Member for Consett (Mr. David

Adams) and other Members dealt with the subject in a very interesting way. The Clause suggests that the Commission shall have power, if they think it reasonable and practicable, to do certain things. With regard to new leases, the Commission would have the right to lay down anything which they considered necessary. A lease would be subject to agreement between those who are to work the coal and the Commission. But with regard to existing mines I do not think that a problem of this magnitude could be handled by the Commission giving instructions, with a penalty proviso behind them, to some of our existing mines, especially in the fourth year of the war. I was brought up near a pit; in fact I have some of the "nicest" looking slag heaps one could ever wish to see in my constituency and I would like to see them removed.
This problem of the prevention of subsidence is not however quite as simple as it can be made out to be in speeches here. While the Royal Commission on Mining Subsidence dealt with hydraulic stowing and compulsory stowing and the scientific laying out of the surface and underground, evidence was submitted that there were technical difficulties with regard to it. There is also the question of cost. One of His Majesty's inspectors, who has had considerable experience in investigations into subsidence in other countries, gave evidence that in his opinion the cost at that time—20 years ago—would be somewhere about is. a ton on the cost of production. Costs have gone up since those days. I know one firm which is experimenting with hydraulic stowing and I hope during the Recess to go down the pit and see the hydraulic stower at work. There are a good many technical difficulties in this respect. I worked in a pit where, for more than two years, we never had a fall. There are other pits which have not sufficient dirt to put back into the soil to the extent suggested in speeches that we have heard to-day. A good many pit heaps, which I hope to see dealt with differently before long, are composed of what has actually come out after the coal has been screened. It is not a problem which we could easily hand over to the Commission and expect to get satisfaction.

Mr. T. Brown: I think my hon. Friend will agree that debris could be sent down from the surface where the layout warrants it.

Mr. Smith: In the fourth year of the war I do not think you could start compulsory stowing. This problem of subsidence, both from the angle of compensation and from that of prevention, is one which anyone charged with planning the future must take into account. It brings in two or three Government Departments—the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Works and Planning, and the Ministery of Fuel and Power, as well as the right hon. Gentleman who is in charge of reconstruction, and the Commission. While giving no specific pledge as to how the thing would be dealt with, the problem will have to he discussed as time goes on. The wording of the Clause is such that we could not very well accept it and, in asking my hon. Friends not to press the matter, they may take it that the problem, and problems associated with it, will not be lost sight of but will be considered from time to time.

Mr. Adams: The Minister has pointed out of the difficulties of carrying out forthwith the proposals in the new Clause. We are not asking for that. We are merely asking that the Commission should be authorised to use its judgment as to whether stowing or packing should take place. If the Minister is turning it down and merely stating that at some future date consideration will be given to the matter, we scarcely think that is a very pleasant and felicitous way of dealing with an important public question. Cannot the Minister say something more specific?

Mr. Smith: This problem is bound to be considered; there is no doubt about that; but so are many more mining problems. My hon. Friend knows that there was a Royal Commission on safety in mines which made many recommendations with regard to roof control underground, airways, ventilation and a number of other things. I suggest that the question of compulsory stowing, which would cut across mining practice, is one that needs consideration and that it will be better dealt with when we deal with these questions generally in a Mining Bill. They cannot be dealt with in a small Bill of this character, which is merely intended to tidy up a few mistakes of the 1938 Act. My hon. Friend can take it that we are not unmindful of this problem. We have been talking about it and we shall continue to give it consideration. I do not think one

can be expected to be more specific on this Bill. Consultations will have to take place in the industry on both sides, and that is one of the reasons why we cannot accept a new Clause like this on a Bill of this character.

Mr. Tom Brown: Will the Minister agree that, in the circumstances of the future, the Minister of Fuel and Power and the Coal Commission will be forced into the position of having to take notice of this question?

Mr. Smith: I cannot reply to that. One can see a little ahead and one can see that other problems besides this will have to be dealt with.

Question, "That the Clause be read a Second time," put, and negatived.

NEW CLAUSE.—(Grants in relief of hard-ship to mineral agents.)

(1) The Commission shall have power to make grants out of revenue to mineral agents in respect of loss suffered by them in consequence of the provisions of the principal Act.
(2) The amount of such grants shall be in the discretion of the Commission, whose decision shall be final and shall be payable only to a mineral agent who satisfies the Commission that he has suffered hardship in his profession as a mineral agent in consequence of the provisions aforesaid.
(3) In assessing the amount of such grants the Commission shall take into account any remuneration which the agent may have received in consequence of the passing of the Principal Act or the work arising therefrom.
(4) "Mineral agent" means a person or firm who was at the date of the Principal Act engaged wholly or mainly as surveyor, valuer or agent in connection with the coal mines of coal and other property and rights vested in the Commission by the Principal Act.—[Mr. Colegate.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Colegate: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
This new Clause affects a very small number of people, but because an injustice is perpetrated to a small number that is no reason why an effort should not be made to put it right. The new Clause deals with the position of mineral agents. When the Coal Act, 1938, was brought in the position of the mineral agents was raised and it was pointed out that the effect of vesting the coal in the State would be that it would be unnecessary to employ mineral agents. Clauses dealing with the matter were brought up during the Debates on that Measure and were


rejected on the following grounds. Firstly, it was said that the mineral agents would be getting four-and-a-half years' notice of the termination of their employment, which is correct; secondly, an undertaking was given that they would have the first chance of jobs under the Commission, and that priority would be given in employment to those who might lose their employment as a result of the Act; and, thirdly—an important point—it was said that during the four-and-a-half years they would have greatly increased professional incomes part of which they could regard as compensation for the loss of their employment. I understand that many of these mineral agents have secured employment with the Coal Commission. There only remain to be considered the small number who have not. While it is true that they have had increased professional incomes during the four-and-a-half years, those incomes have been greatly affected by Income Tax. I am not running what I would call the usual fallacy about Income Tax. Like a good many others in the House, I would like to see completely abolished any payment—

The Deputy-Chairman: I cannot see how Income Tax can be discussed on the questions raised in this new Clause.

Mr. Colegate: They were promised that four-and-a-half years' income would provide a sum which would compensate them for their loss of practice. I submit that the tremendous change in Income Tax, which was not then foreseen, has thrown out the calculations made in that respect. I am not discussing Income Tax qua Income Tax.

The Deputy-Chairman: I see the point, and it might be put forward as an illustration, but only very shortly.

Mr. Colegate: I would remind the Committee that the Income Tax Commissioners themselves do not tax compensation which is given upon profits. This compensation was promised to these people for loss of office. I would also remind the Committee that five years' income is regarded in commercial and industrial circles as only fair compensation for loss of office, but not four or five years' income less Income Tax. I have had personal experience of this matter. If one receives five years' income one

receives it gross, and the Inland Revenue do not charge Income Tax upon it. It so happens that, by the accident of the war, the promise given in 1938 by the Government has not been fulfilled and instead of receiving, as they might have expected, 4½ years' income on the increased scale, they have received 4½ years' income at a very much lower rate. Therefore, there is a very serious case for consideration. I appeal to the Minister, as there are very few of these cases, to consider some means of providing compensation for them. He can deal with this very small number of cases at a trifling cost and remove a sense of injustice from a body of professional men who have always been respected and looked up to by both sides in the coal industry.

Major Lloyd George: I am sorry that I shall not be able to accept this new Clause, and I will briefly give my reasons to the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Colegate) referred to mineral agents. Mineral. agency is not a separate profession. Mineral agents can be qualified either as mining agents, surveyors, mining surveyors or land agents, and what is more important is the degree to which any man or firm was engaged in mineral agency, and that varies greatly. At one end of the scale there are men or firms whose business was almost entirely mineral agency; at the other end men or firms whose mineral agency business was almost a side line. In a way they are rather similar to the tithe collectors. There were about 1,800 people or firms connected with collecting tithes, and I think only about 120 whose commission exceeded £100 per annum. I have not comparable figures for mineral agents, but I am told that in 1938 there were not more than 25 to 30 firms wholly or mainly engaged in this work. When the Government announced their intention to unify the ownership of coal the mineral agents foresaw the end of their mineral agency business, and, indeed, earlier than that, in 1936, I think, a memorandum was submitted by the royalty owners and that memorandum contained a claim for compensation for their agents. That claim was discussed on several occasions with the professional representatives of the royalty owners and also with the committee of the Surveyor's Institute, and it is quite clear that a guarantee of con-


tinuance for five years would have been accepted. That was in 1936 and that would have taken them to 1941. Actually, they have either been given jobs or they have remained undisturbed until now.
A good deal has been done by the Commission, as my hon. Friend knows, to get many of these people employment. I do not think they were ever promised any compensation in the sense that my hon. Friend means, but they were promised four years' work. The question of Income Tax really does not affect the issue so much, because all of us have had to suffer from the increased Income Tax, in whatever capacity we happen to be, and I do not think I can possibly take that as a reason for moving in respect of this Clause. I have no evidence that they were promised anything than the four years' work, and that they have had. Moreover, during that period they had opportunities of earning fees, which, incidentally, were paid by the Commission, in connection with the valuation of their principals' properties, and it is quite possible that the fees would be equivalent to a reasonable capitalisation of their mineral business. I would say also that they probably earned during this valuation period more than their business would have provided if the Act had never been passed.
I am not trying to suggest that if one thing is wrong it is necessary that the other thing should be wrong too, but if we compare them with the tithe collectors, for example, we find that about 120 firms, I think, were retained for the period of seven years. The remainder, about 1,700, lost all their work immediately. I would repeat that under the Act of 1938 nearly all the mineral agents were either given jobs or left undisturbed until 1943. There is plenty of evidence to show that they would have been quite willing in 1936 to accept continuance for five years, and, in fact, they have been left undisturbed until 1943. There is one further point: tithe collection has been transferred to the Inland Revenue, while in the case of coal the Commission draws its mineral staff from the ranks of past practitioners in mineral agency, and I do not really think that as a class they can really say they have not been treated fairly reasonably. I very much regret that I cannot see my way to accept the Clause.

Mr. Colegate: I have made my point and beg to ask leave to withdraw the Clause.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

First and Second Schedules agreed to.

THIRD SCHEDULE.—(Amendments of paragraph 12 of the Third Schedule to the principal Act.)

Major Lloyd George: I beg to move, in page 15, line 33, to leave out paragraph 3, and to insert:
3. Unless the referee otherwise directs, not more than one expert witness shall be called, either by the Regional Valuation Board or by the person or persons claiming the review, to give evidence on the review, whether as to the value of the holding or otherwise; and accordingly sub-paragraph (3) of the said paragraph 12 shall have effect as if the words 'as to the value of the holding were omitted.'
I can very briefly explain this Amendment to the Committee. There is some doubt as to what the original Act laid down in this matter, and this Amendment makes it perfectly clear that witnesses as to fact can be called without leave and only one expert can be called without leave. That makes it perfectly clear.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule, as amended, agreed to.

Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, considered; read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.

GAS (SPECIAL ORDERS)

Resolved,

"That the Draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Minister of Fuel and Power under the Gas Undertakings Acts, 1920 to 1934, on the application of the Gainsborough Urban District Council, which was presented to this House on 24th June and published, be approved."

Resolved,
That the Draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Minister of Fuel and Power under the Gas Undertakings Acts, 1920 to 1934, on the application of the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the Borough of Port Talbot, which was presented to this House on 24th June and published, be aproved."—[Mr. Tom Smith.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

It being after the hour appointed for the Adjournment of the House, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.